


Serendipity

by griffindork93



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griffindork93/pseuds/griffindork93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finally the war is over, Madara is dead and Sasuke and Sakura are finally working things out...only to be ripped apart and scattered in different dimensions. Now they must fight their way across multiple realities to reunite and return home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a collaboration with Angellwriter on Fanfiction. Angellwriter would write Sasuke's experiences and I write Sakura's. However, we are not simply telling the same story from two points of view. Essentially, we are splitting the story between us. Angellwriter writes one half and I write the other. 
> 
> Each half can stand alone, so if you don't want to go to Fanfiction to read Sasuke's half, it's not necessary.

Sakura didn’t want to do this, but it couldn’t be helped. Left with no other choice, she took a deep breath, brushing nonexistent lint off her short pink apron skirt. Aside from the green flak jacket she wore over her red shirt, Sakura’s outfit had remained unchanged.

She was very proud of the vest. It may have been given to every register Konoha shinobi during the war, but Sakura had earned the right to wear it with pride.

Her target looked up when she threw open the door to the break room. The hospital’s work never seemed to end. They were just as busy now as the medic’s had been on the warfront. Shinobi willingly came through the door in droves. Sakura thought that last point was worth celebrating. She could name several of her comrades that were notorious for avoiding the hospital even when she could see bone. For that one fact alone, she was grateful for the war. It had taught ninety percent of the ranks that they could not skip out on checkups.

Due to the staggering number of injured shinobi and the limited amount of medic-nin, each ninja that came in for healing was scheduled for an hour long, once a week session until they were ready to return to the active ninja rosters.

The system was working thus far. Life threatening injuries had been given priority and dealt with immediately, but cases like broken bones were often realigned and the attending medic-nin encouraged new bone growth, but left it to heal naturally. Some shinobi complained bitterly about having to heal the civilian way, but Sakura had to make a tough call. She chose to preserve her healers. They’d be doing nobody any good laid up in their own hospital beds from chakra exhaustion.

Despite being the one to design the system and put it to work, the pinkette didn’t adhere to it more often than not. She pushed her chakra to its limits in order to see to more patients and to see them one hundred percent healed.

Or as close as she could get. It was as much matter of pride for her as it was that knowing every ninja who came through those doors was used to immediate gratification. Sakura was considered a medical prodigy, a miracle worker amongst her coworkers, but she couldn’t replace lost limbs.

She’d give her friends dozens of excuses for why she was too tired to go out to eat. Hinata was concerned for her. Occasionally, Sakura would arrive home at her apartment to find that the Hyuuga heiress had left her a decadent and generously sized portion bento.

Hinata was the only one that didn’t berate her for being a hypocrite, and Sakura appreciated her silent support. She may not have understood why Sakura pushed herself so hard, but she wasn’t going to pry.

The Head Medic’s reasoning was really simple. Medical ninjutsu was one of the few shinobi arts she outstripped everyone else in the world at. She had the ability to do so much for the men and women who she had fought beside.

How could she call herself a medic-nin if she only did the bare minimum and sent them on their way with a reminder to be back next week?

She couldn’t. So she made the choice to work herself to the point of fatigue, swallow a chakra pill, and go home and sleep for ten hours, then wake the next day and do it all over again. Her chakra would be nearly full when she woke. All things considered, Sakura saw no need to change her routine. As long as her performance was unaffected, she would continue doing her job as she saw fit.

Sakura weaved through tables and plastic chairs toward Ino, whose hand was raised in a universal gesture of come join us. Ino was already eating with her cousin and student, Memori Yamanaka. The elder blonde was talking excitedly, giving Memori an impromptu lesson on what the foods a person ate could tell you about them. If Sakura didn’t know better, she would have thought her best friend was Ibiki Morino’s long lost daughter and destined to follow in the interrogator’s footsteps.

She shivered unconsciously at the thought. Ino would do very well in the interrogation forces without her clan’s jutsus. It was part of being a gossip queen. If she didn’t already know it, she would soon enough. She always managed to wriggle Sakura’s secrets out of her. Ino was very subtle. Sakura wouldn’t realize she had done it until it the blonde let an exclamation of “Aha!”

The accomplished medic-nin slid into the hard plastic seat across from the two blondes who gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement but didn’t break off their conversation. It didn’t bother Sakura because it gave her more time to prepare a speech to use against Ino.

When Ino finally turned her glittering blue eyes on the pinkette, she nearly changed her mind about coming to her. They were practically twinkling with curiosity.

“It’s not often you grace us common medic-nin with your presence, mighty Billboard Brow,” Ino said coyly. Sakura punched the other girl’s arm. It was a testament to Ino’s pain tolernatce that she didn’t yelp and simply massaged the already purpling flesh. “What brings you here?”

“Can you take a couple hours of my afternoon shift? Just at the beginning. Not the whole thing.” Sakura hurried to say when her friend arched a sculpted eyebrow. “Naruto said he desperately needs my help for the new seal he’s working on and you’re the only person I could think of to cover me.”

She figured a little flattery never hurt. Ino’s face lost the skeptical quality to it as she seriously considered the plea. “What’s the idiot working on this time?”

Ino should thank her stars that the word idiot was spoken with affection, or Sakura would have decked her, best female friend or not. Naruto had worked so hard to gain acceptance from everyone in Konoha, acceptance he shouldn’t have been denied. Kumo treated their Jinchuuriki with respect. The man shouldn’t have had to defeat Pein or Madara to get a village to love him.

Sakura was ashamed of the way she used to treat the blond. He may not have been the smartest in the academy, but that was because he learned better by trying than listening to lectures. Naruto could makes plans on the fly and adjust them just as easily.

“I don’t know,” Sakura shrugged. He was a genius when it came to seals though.

 Activation component. Limiters. Ofuda. The technical terms went over her head every time the hyperactive ninja tried to explain it. She was smart. She had an IQ close to 170. Even Shikamaru Nara with his IQ of over 200 couldn’t follow Naruto’s explanations. He had a gift for Fuuinjutsu and she didn’t. The most she would ever be able to do is activate one.

“You’ll owe me a favor.”

Sakura didn’t manage to hide her wince. Ino’s ideas of favors weren’t exactly of the equal exchange variety. She wouldn’t be taking up some of her hours in repayment. It was more likely that the Yamanaka would forcibly drag her to the bar or Yakiniku Q. They were her generation’s usual haunts and Sakura had been avoiding them like they were cursed.

She felt out of place amongst them. Emotionally, the pink haired woman had come out of the war fairly unscarred. Aside from the normal trauma associated with fighting a war, she came out fine. She didn’t belong to a clan. Her parents were civilians. Unlike most of their shared friends, she hadn’t lost anyone. Ino had lost both her father and sensei and so had Shikamaru. Team Seven was the only team to not lose family members to the war. But they didn’t have any to start with, so it didn’t really count.

Plus, now that Sasuke was back, Sakura found herself at a lost how to act around him. It wasn’t often she saw him anymore. What with her always at the hospital and Sasuke joining ANBU. Any time they were in the same area she felt like the last Uchiha was always staring at her. Intensely. Sometimes, Sakura thought he was following. He was always there when she looked over her shoulder. It was unnerving, especially since he never approached her or tried to talk to her. He just watched her like a hawk.

She didn’t know where she stood with the avenger. Whatever relationship existed between them wasn’t just as teammates, but Sakura wouldn’t consider them friends, either. Every time her green eyes clapped on his form, her heart started racing and a flush would cover her cheeks. Even after all this time, she still liked him.

Sakura pushed those feelings away. She knew there was no way Sasuke felt the same and all her previous experience taught her that thinking with her heart around him would only cause her grief. He was always calling her weak and over emotional.

The two of them were like water and oil. She and Sasuke just didn’t mix. They had changed too much. The war especially. If she distanced herself, those feelings would eventually wither and die and it wouldn’t hurt her so much to be around him. So, to avoid being uncomfortable and awkward, she spent more time working at the hospital and less hanging with her friends.

It was for the best really. She missed going for a quick bowl of ramen with Naruto and training with the team. But after a rather disastrous morning practice where Kakashi had paired her and Sasuke together to fight two on one against him. Needless to say it had not gone well. She and Sasuke were constantly tripping over each other and had no coordination to speak of. Kakashi had beaten them soundly in only ten minutes and they hadn’t so much as landed a scratch on him.

It had been the last sign the pink haired woman needed that she and Sasuke just weren’t meant to be anything more than comrades.

Naruto didn’t ask for her help often. He didn’t understand why his two best friends were avoiding each other, but he had stopped trying to force them to resolve their issues, realizing it was something they would have to work out on their own.

Since he had been so understanding of her need for space, Sakura didn’t have it in her to say no, even though she was sure this new seal would probably result in a pretty explosion.

So, despite whatever exorbitant favor Ino would ask of her in return, Sakura would agree because she owed it to Naruto. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to minimize the damage.

“I’ll buy you a pair of shoes.” She brokered.

Ino’s eyes narrowed. “Three.”

“No way. Two.”

“And a week manning the counter of the flower shop.”

“Deal,” Sakura said, before Ino changed her mind. Normally, she would have protested at doing Ino’s job for a week when the girl was only filling in for Sakura for a couple of hours. But Ino’s mother had taken Inoichi’s death really hard, and her daughter was struggling to run the shop by herself. Sakura would have gladly helped if asked, but Ino had her pride. Not to mention she probably thought Sakura would start using her shop as another excuse to avoide the group.

Besides, working in the Yamanaka flower shop would be a nice change of pace. Relaxing and nowhere near as harrying or demanding as a ten hour shift at the hospital.

“Thanks, Ino. You’re a lifesaver,” Sakura said, standing.

“Where are you off too already?”

She flashed a grin that showed off all her teeth. “Going to meet Naruto, of course. My shift starts in twenty. Don’t be late!”

With that, Sakura turned tail and ran, conveniently ignoring Ino’s shouts on how she needed to give a girl more warning than that. It was Sakura’s revenge for the second pair of shoes.

The jounin set a fast pace towards the training grounds Team Seven still used. She found the blond waiting there; crouched over one of two of the largest sealing scrolls the girl had ever seen. If it was standing upright, Sakura estimated it would come up to Naruto’s shoulders.

She froze at the sight of a dark haired figure hovering over his shoulder as he wrote the characters. She was momentarily short of breath. Naruto hadn’t told her Sasuke was going to be there, too.

Maybe she could get away unnoticed if she walked away now. She’d claim an emergency came up at the hospital. Then she’d sneak a peek at the missions list to see when Sasuke would be out of the village and make it up to Naruto then.

“There you are, Sakura-chan!”

Or not.

“Hey, Naruto,” she greeted, and as if an afterthought, she tilted her head in her second teammate’s direction. “Sasuke.”

She was surprised to see him here. She had been rather diligently avoiding the Uchiha since the end of the war. Sakura didn’t think she had spoken more than a “welcome back” to him when they first got back to the village. She’d never tell anybody, but she had never quite forgiven the man for leaving her on a bench in the middle of the night.

Dark eyes bore into her. With a grunt he turned back to the seal Naruto had been in the middle of writing. Cautiously, Sakura stepped up beside him, mentally scolding herself for acting like he might stab her with Kusanagi at any minute. For Naruto’s sake, she could stand next to Sasuke for an hour.

Emerald green eyes darted left and right as she inspected the blond’s newest masterpiece.

As usual, she couldn’t make heads or tails of the seal structure. Because Fuuinjutsu was such a precise, meticulous art, the instructions had to be written entirely in hiragana and katakana. Naruto studied those characters for months so he could learn Fuuinjutsu. Using kanji, which could represent more than one meaning, tended to set the scroll on fire.

Sakura shook her head. For someone that didn’t like standing still, Naruto put painstaking care into clearly and explicitly writing exactly what he designed a seal to do. She wondered how much better he would have done in the academy if he put the same amount of effort he did into his homework as he did creating new seals. 

She could pick out a few words. Other. Understand. Soul. Or maybe it was spirit. And she thought that one was the symbol for the mind. She knew that one to be seal, although she didn’t know why it was included. Was he going to seal something in them? Because she had not signed up for that.

She couldn’t decipher enough characters to discern what this particular structure was for. Naruto was the only one that knew, so she nudged her shoulder into his. “So, what’s this one for?”

The Fuuinjutsu prodigy was positively beaming as he explained. “You see this?” He pointed to the symbol she believed to be spirit or soul. “This seal is supposed to connect one’s soul and mind. Then this one here,” Naruto pointed to a second symbol with his foot, “allows for you to transfer your consciousness to another person.”

“That sounds like the Yamanaka’s clan jutsu.”

“Well, yes. That’s where I got the idea.” Naruto shrugged haphazardly, not really caring that he was essentially ripping off a clan technique. “This is just a prototype. I need the base to work before I can modify it. Which is why I needed you two to be my guinea pigs!”

Sasuke grunted at the label. Sakura looked from him to Naruto, who was still grinning widely and now performing some kind of happy dance. She was starting to regret promising to help him test a new seal.

“If there are no further protests.” Naruto directed his friends to each stand in the circle of one scroll. When they were in position, he ran through a long sequence of hand signs.

Really long. Sakura fidgeted in place when he showed no sign of stopping. She glanced at Sasuke, casually standing four feet from her with hands in pocket and looked bored. She thought she caught a hint of red in his eyes, but she whipped her head around when he saw her staring.

Finally, Naruto slammed both hands down, one in the corner of each seal.  

All three of them waited with bated breath. Sakura had no idea how this seal was going to connect consciousness or souls or whatever Naruto said it was going to do, but she expected it to be flashy. A plume of smoke. Bright light. The inked letters crawling off the page like one of Sai’s drawings. Anything.

Sakura was about to say that that had been anticlimactic and that Naruto should try again when the ink began to glow.

She closed her eyes to shield them from the bright light the seal was emitting. When she opened them again she was in a place she had never been to before. But Naruto’s description was enough to recognize it.

And if it wasn’t, the giant nine-tailed fox behind the gold gate that separated her from the Bijuu was a pretty good clue.

She surreptitiously edged away from the gate, one eye always on the sleeping fox. He may have been Naruto’s friend and partner now, but that didn’t mean he felt the same for every person that found themselves in his inner sanctum.

She had seen Naruto work his magic first hand, changing the mind of every enemy they had fought until they were one of his friends. But even if he had changed the Kyuubi’s mind, it was still the Kyuubi. Sakura had to refrain from reaching up to rub her shoulder. That memory would always be fresh in her mind. She wasn’t certain she’d ever be comfortable being in the fox’s presence.

“Alright! It worked!” Naruto cheered.

Sakura jumped. Her heart raced when she noticed the Kyuubi lift his head, one red eye opening to pin her with an appraising look.

Her anger at Naruto overcame her fear of the Kyuubi. “You mean you meant to do this? Why didn’t you say so? I almost had a heart attack, you idiot!”

“Sakura-chan,” he whined, furiously rubbing the already forming lump on his head.

“Tch. Dobe.”

Sakura shot a look at Sasuke, for once not feeling uneasy that his eyes were practically glued to her, because she could see the annoyance in them and she knew how to deal with an annoyed Sasuke.

Not to mention that she agreed with him. The two of them knew all too well how Naruto got when he had some harebrained scheme. But Sakura thought this one took the cake. What was he thinking when he decided it would be a good idea to drag her and Sasuke into his mindscape when the blond already shared it with the Kyuubi?

That was just begging for something to go horribly wrong.

Naruto apparently didn’t see the problem. He sauntered over to the gate that kept the Kyuubi inside the seal, reaching in to pat the side of his paw his head rested on. The fox’s eye never strayed from her and Sasuke though.

“It was actually Kurama’s idea,” the Jinchuuriki said blithely. “He finds it amusing when humans squabble over petty things. His words not mine,” Naruto hurriedly defended himself when a tick mark marred Sakura’s forehead.

“Originally, I was going to have you guys go into the other person’s mind. That way you could really know what they were thinking and feeling.”

“You were going to have us switch bodies?” Sakura sounded scandalized. Was that even possible? Certainly even someone as unpredictable as Naruto wouldn’t think it was a good idea for her to switch bodies with Sasuke.

She resolutely ignored the fleeting amusement she felt imagining Sasuke having to deal with her emotions, considering he had the emotional range the size of a smoke bomb. There was no way he’d be able to handle it. She, on the other hand, would only have to act surly and not talk to anyone, let Naruto drag her around, and never remove her eyes from herself.

It only served to remind her why she was avoiding Sasuke. Recalcitrant bastard.

“But Kurama’s idea was better. So I made it bring you here instead. Now get on with it.” He ordered.

Sakura stared at him flabbergasted. Get on with what? She looked at Sasuke again to see if he had any idea what their knuckleheaded teammate was talking about. She only got a slightly raised eyebrow, which she took to mean he didn’t have a clue either.

“Well,” Naruto said insistently when neither of them responded to his demand. “Aren’t you two going to say something? Clear the air? You guys haven’t spoken since Sasuke came back.”

Sakura couldn’t stop herself from looking at Naruto incredulously. That’s what all this was about? He wanted her and Sasuke to work things out? This was all another plot to make them work out their differences? She thought he had given up on those.

“Look, Naruto, not that I don’t appreciate it,” she started gently, “but this really isn’t necessary. Sasuke and I . . .” she floundered trying to come up with the words that could describe the relationship she had with the dark haired male. “We just don’t get along. He’s an uncaring bastard and I’m too emotional. We’re better off being just teammates.”

Sakura flinched at the wounded look on Naruto’s face. She hated breaking his heart like this, but it was true. She stilled cared for Sasuke, and stars how much it hurt her to care about an arrogant man that treated her like trash for most of the time she knew him. But she wasn’t going to act on her feelings. They were just left over from her gennin days and it would only cause her a world of pain to try for anything more than friendship with Sasuke.

Everything they had gone through up to this point only served to prove how incompatible they were. The gulf that had been between them as gennin. The ease at which he rendered her unconscious and fled the village.

The only time she ever had anything remotely worth mentioning with Sasuke was when they, Naruto, him and herself, fought during the war. The three of them had been a sight to see. Naruto, cloaked in his Bijuu mode, would bust out his one man army. Sasuke, armed with his sword and Sharingan, would cut through White Zetsus like they were made of paper. And Sakura would have been using her chakra enhanced strength to her full advantage, sending White Zetsus flying.

That time they had worked together phenomenally. The three of them had been untouchable. With Naruto on the offensive, Sasuke backing up the blond using his Susano’o to protect them, and Sakura to heal and cover the defensive, dealing with Madara had been easy.

Powerful though he was, the Uchiha ancestor was still just one man.

She turned to Sasuke, hoping to get him to support her, and was surprised by the restrained fury smoldering in his eyes. He took a step towards her and Sakura instinctively took one backwards.

Before she could protest, Sasuke had closed the distance between them, put one hand on the back of her neck, and his mouth was on hers.

Sakura used to daydream about what it would be like when Sasuke kissed her. In her mind it was soft, sweet, and gentle. It would right after he professed that she was the only girl for him. She would close her eyes and melt into his embrace.

This was nothing like that.

It was better.

It was hard and furious and passionate. It was demaning and possessive. It was electrifying and dizzying. It sent fire through her veins. She had dated Kiba a couple months back, but his kisses never provoked this kind of response.

Sasuke drew back, satisfied smirk on his face. She stared at him, dazed.

“Wha. . . what was that for?” she asked, breathless.

“You’re annoying. A ninja shouldn’t have to ask.”

Fury replaced pleasure. She pulled her elbow back and let her fist slam into his eye. He dropped her like a paper bomb to press his palms into it like it would ease the pain. Her anger roared in her ears. No, that was the Kyuubi chuckling.

“See Naruto! That right there is why I could never get along with him.” She shouted. “He’s always ridiculing me and calling me annoying.”

Naruto actually looked uncomfortable. Maybe he thought she and Sasuke could talk like the mature adults they were, but that was clearly asking too much of the Uchiha.

“Look, uh, this is rather personal. Kurama may like this stuff but I don’t.” That damn fox was still laughing. Sakura didn’t find any of this amusing. Sasuke kissing her then insulting her. Naruto’s deciding they need to fix their relationship in the first place. “I’m going to let you guys work this out. Kurama will let you out of the seal when you’ve made up.”

With that, Naruto was gone, missing the horrified look she sent at him. Kurama, the giant nine-tailed fox demon that took pleasure in watching humans fight was in control of when they could leave? Sakura was going to kill him when she got out.

Helplessly, she faced Sasuke. He hadn’t moved from where she punched him. Every line of his body was stiff and Sakura couldn’t describe the look she saw in his eyes.

“Look, you must want to be doing this as much as I do. What do you say we pretend to be friends around Naruto and go back to our separate lives?”

Sakura thought it was a reasonable offer. If they could be amiable when in Naruto’s presence the blond wouldn’t take such drastic actions again and they would both be free to go about their lives without all the drama.

Sasuke’s jaw was set, though. “No,” he said flatly.

The pinkette wanted to curse. Why did he have to be so damn stubborn? She threw her hands up in exasperation, turning sideways so he couldn’t see how much he was affecting her. “Then what do you want?” she asked, frustrated by everything at this point.

“I want to know what happened to the Sakura that didn’t hesitate to throw herself into a fight where her friends were concerned. I want the Sakura that’s strong enough to crack mountains. I want the Sakura fought when all hope seemed lost. I want the Sakura that doesn’t run away the second she realizes I’m in the room. I want the Sakura that didn’t let her fear of the unknown, of defeat, of getting her, turn her into a coward.”

“Coward?!” Sakura yelled, incensed. She had been taken aback by Sasuke’s speech. She hadn’t had the faintest hint that he thought of her that highly. She thought Naruto was the only person he would ever hold in that regard.

She let him rant because he was right. She had vastly changed from the Sakura he witnessed during the war. She came home and immersed herself in her duties at the hospital. She hardly made an appearance at the once a week training sessions Team Seven held, which were every man for himself battles to decided who would pay for lunch. She made excuses to leave the second she saw him.

 But calling her a coward was the last straw.

“I’m not a coward. Just because I don’t solve my problems like fighting like you and Naruto do doesn’t make me a coward.”

Sasuke scoffed. “You didn’t solve your problems with me at all. You tucked your tail in and ran at the mere mention of me. You can’t even bring yourself to look at me unless you’re yelling at me.”

Startled, she turned towards him. He didn’t look as angry as she’d thought he’d be after that admittance. Guiltily, she realized he was right.

Beyond exhausted, Sakura slumped to the floor, uncaring that is was covered by a layer of dank water or that Sasuke came to sit beside her. “I’m sorry, Sasuke, but I don’t know what you want me to do. You hardly liked me when we were gennin. You tried to kill me once.”

“You tried to kill me first.”

Sakura laughed. Of course he wasn’t going to apologize for nearly murdering her. Sasuke never regretted anything he did. “We both know I never would have been able to go through with it.”

Her retort was met with silence. Then, miraculously, two words shattered it. “I’m sorry.”

Sakura twisted her neck to look at him. She had never been good at reading him but the softened face, slightly widened eyes, and small smile all spoke of sincerity. It looked rather out of place on the man she was certain couldn’t show anything other than hate.

It was odd. There were times where she inherently knew Sasuke, like how she knew he was going to leave that night. Then there were times like this where he surprised her and Sakura thought she’d never truly know him.

“Me too, Sasuke. Me too.”

There was a splashing of water as he gained his feet. Then his hand was in front of her face. She quickly glanced at his face. It was as impassive as ever and yet more open than she had ever seen him. Sakura placed her hand in his and he effortless pulled her to her feet.

She didn’t let go once she was standing, nor did he make any effort to pull away.

“Friends?”

She caught a glint of something in his eyes but it was gone as quickly as it had come. “Ah.”

“Are you hairless monkeys done? That wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the brat promised it would be.” The Kyuubi drawled languidly.

Only Sasuke’s steady grip on her hand kept her from jumping out of her skin. She had forgotten that the two of them were in there with the fox. She had been so focused on Sasuke, who was exposing his true emotions for the first time, that she forgot they weren’t alone.

Without warning the fox’s red chakra bubbled, rising flying towards them at an alarming speed.

Sakura had one second to realize that even if they moved now they would still be hit by the Kyuubi’s chakra. She hadn’t thought when Naruto left the responsibility of removing them from the seal that the fox would do it so violently.

There was a burning pain on her right arm. Sasuke’s hand was torn from hers and she was thrown backwards, heavily impacting the stone wall.

The last thing she remembered was the fear in Sasuke’s dark eyes and him screaming her name.


	2. Chapter 1: AU 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura thinks she’s lost her mind when everyone keeps telling her the war never ended. She doesn’t want to fight but what other choice does she have? She’s stuck in a world not her own, and if she wants any hope of getting back home she needs to return to Konoha. Only, there’s someone who doesn’t want her to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genre: Angst, Tragedy, and probably some others.
> 
> A rough timeline for this story has been posted on my profile page on Fanfiction (under the same author). For those who care to know when major events happened and whether or not Angellwriter and I are pulling these dates out of our asses, it’s there. And it is rough, because Kishimoto never put a date on anything that happens in the manga. Don't forget if you're interested in Sasuke's dimension traveling to check out Angellwriter on Fanfiction.
> 
> Warnings: Dark!Evil!Cruel!Sasuke, dark themes, character deaths, rape/non-con (nothing explicit. Only two sentences saying it happens. I am not condoning or supporting or saying it is okay in any way shape or form.), crude/profane language, brief description of torture/abuse, thoughts of suicide? Kind of. (They’re vague.) 
> 
> This chapter earns its M rating.

Her chest was heaving as her lungs desperately tried to take in air. Her heart raced, blood pounding in her ears. The last time Sakura had been that afraid was during the war. Knowing that it was all in Naruto’s mind had not helped any.

That’s what she got for having a Yamanaka as her best friend growing up; an intimate knowledge of how mindscapes and mind jutsus work and knowing that events that occur in the mind can have physical effects. Ino was unflinching in her need to show off her jutsus each time she mastered one. On Sakura of course because it was her duty as best friend to help her with training and how better to prove they worked then to use them on her pink haired friend?

All she could see was the Kyuubi’s orange colored chakra, bubbling angrily and giving off the killing intent expected of the greatest of the nine Bijuu. Seeing it whip towards her, all too similar to the time Naruto had lost control when he tried to use four tails against Orochimaru.

Déjà vu was never a comfortable feeling (and often times just bad news when ninja were involved because in that case, it was practically guaranteed you were walking into a trap. Genjutsus were a nasty business and if she wasn’t so damned good at them she would have sworn off them.) but it was even worse when it was triggered by traumatic memories.

Stupidly, she had frozen in fear, half expecting Naruto to reenter his mind and protect her. Afterwards, she recognized that it was a ridiculous thought, but the blond had always been there, defending her even when she didn’t need him to jump in.

But she couldn’t always rely on Naruto to swoop in like the stereotypical hero and save her. Not to mention being paralyzed by fear was not a good trait for a ninja. Had the rosette frozen like that at any other time, she would have been dead.

In the last second before she had been removed from the tunnel mindscape, Sakura remembered pain. The soreness along her back from being smashed into the brick wall was an itch compared to the agony of the Bijuu’s chakra striking at her for the second time. And that agony was so much more intense the second time because it was not only her upper arm injured, but the entire front side of her body.

Sakura slowly eased herself up into a sitting position, mentally cataloging how each part of her body moved. There was no twinge from her trapezius or latissimus dorsi muscles, which were the two largest muscles in the back and the ones that had taken the brunt of the collision. Nor did she note anything unusual in her rectus abdominus or oblique muscles, which were responsible for her shifting from a reclining position to an upright one.

She didn’t like relying entirely on chakra for a diagnosis. Often times it could be a waste of valuable energy, and as a medic-nin, it was important that she conserved her chakra. Iryō-nin weren’t supposed to completely heal any injury. Instead they healed it to the point that the body could safely take over.

Still, she let her chakra surge, running a full body scan to reinforce and verifying her hands on analysis. Being thorough and precise were key characteristics in her field of work.

Most importantly, Sakura discovered that she was not covered in lacerations from coming in contact with the demon’s chakra, something she was glad for. Just the four scratches the pinkette had received when Naruto had unknowingly attacked her were excruciating. The Kyuubi’s chakra was poisonous, and at the time she hadn’t been skilled enough to heal the wound herself. Even Kabuto hadn’t been able to heal it completely. For all his unsavory methods and twisted desires, she wasn’t able to deny his medical acumen.

Absentmindedly, her fingers trailed along her left arm, tracing the faint scars left behind. With some trial and error healing Naruto when he trained to whatever it was he had done with the Kyuubi, Sakura had been able to minimize the scarring left behind. However, she hadn’t been looking forward to healing the entire front half of her person. Had that attack not taken place in Naruto’s mind, Sakura could say with certainty that she would be dead. Only a Jinchuuriki could survive exposure to so much of a Bijuu’s chakra.

Relieved that she was uninjured, the jounin finally turned her attention to her surroundings.

“What the . . .” she breathed.

She was not, as she had anticipated, back in Team Seven’s old training grounds. Naruto wasn’t latching onto her in an insanely tight hug while shouting how he knew his plan would work and demanding the details. Even Sasuke, who had been in the idiot’s mind with her until the end, was absent.

In fact, Sakura didn’t think she was even in Konoha. Her teammates weren’t the only things missing. The famous forest landscape was too.

She had awoken in a field of blackened grass the crumbled when she brushed a hand over the blades and sparse withered trees. Ash clung to every surface and the scent of smoke still lingered, telling Sakura that the devastation had been recent.

What had happened here? Was this her old training ground, charred beyond recognition by the Kyuubi’s poisonous chakra? Or had the violent removal of her person from Naruto’s mind resulted in her physical body also being moved?

The latter option made only slightly more sense than the first, because the first did not explain the lacking presences of Naruto and Sasuke. But it was still ridiculous because she had never heard of any power, all powerful tailed beasts that were beings of pure chakra be damned, capable of affecting one’s physical state from within another person’s mindscape. Yamanakas were an exception in that they could manipulate someone else by transferring their consciousness, but that was not what the Kyuubi had done.

Sakura heaved an exasperated sigh. Only Naruto could turn a favor into a disaster of such a scale. She had woken up that morning to the same routine she had fallen into since the war’s end, and now she was in the middle of nowhere without even a kunai. She didn’t even want to think how his jutsu managed to break all the laws of nature. Getting back home, preferably without causing an international incident, was her priority.

Taking into account the terrain, she reasoned that she had wound up somewhere in the north. Probably in Yugakure or Shimogakure, both of which were several days from her village. If she was really unlucky, she might even be in Kaminari no Kuni. The Raikage still hated Sasuke for supposedly capturing and killing his brother, because even if Killer B had managed to trick him, the Uchiha had still intended to take the Eight-Tails from him. Sasuke’s actions in the war had in no way redeemed him in the Kage of Kumo’s eyes, and he was likely to hate her just for being associated with him. Kumogakure shinobi were extremely unyielding.

This particular area couldn’t have been part of the Fourth Shinobi War’s battleground because the fire was too recent. It had been nineteen months since the war had ended. The vegetation, grass, flowers, sapling trees; something would have started growing back by now.

And while it was good to know she hadn’t been displaced to a former skirmish site, Sakura still needed to get away from the area, lest whoever was responsible for the scorching the place returned.

“Well, no time like the present.” Using the sinking sun to get her bearings, Sakura started lightly jogging southward, subconsciously masking her chakra until it felt like that of a mountain squirrell’s.

After twenty minutes of travel, she had left the clearing charred beyond recognition behind, slowly traveling higher in elevation. It didn’t take much longer for green grass to be replaced by grey and brown rocks. If the mountain range steadily growing larger in the distance wasn’t a clue, the low hanging clouds were a kunai to the gut.

Lightning. She was in the Land of Lightning.

She felt like it bore repeating just to emphasize the point of it. She was in a dangerous country.

Sakura wanted nothing more than to hightail it out of the overly militaristic country, but she knew it was unwise. Beyond knowing that she was in Kaminari no Kuni, she had no idea where she was. So running blindly across the countryside would be foolish. Especially with night approaching. With her luck, she’d manage to run straight into Kumogakure and be arrested on charges of spying or entering unpermitted or some other bullshit.

Getting past the border checkpoint would be near impossible. They were unavoidable, being the only places to safely cross the mountains and she couldn’t impersonate a Kumo shinobi well enough to fool them into letting her out. Hopefully, they’d recognize her as Tsunade’s apprentice and give her a chance to explain.

She continued her ascent up the mountainside, keeping a close eye out for a cave or rock overhang. The sky was turning steadily darker and the clouds were now black. There was a storm rolling in, and Sakura would need to find shelter to wait it out.

The thunder came first, sounding infinitely many times louder up in the mountains than it ever did in her apartment. For a moment, she thought the clap might have temporarily deafened her, because only silenced followed it, then a streak of lightning arced across the sky with a sharp crack.

The jounin ducked into the first cave she found, grateful that it was semi-deep and lacked any signs of mountain lions. The Land of Lightning was notorious for their mountains lions, which Sakura had had an unfortunate encounter with during the war. The lion was easily comparable to the tigers that could be found in the Forest of Death and were lethal predators.

She set a complex genjutsu on the entrance. It wasn’t being paranoid. Paranoia to a ninja was establishing adequate safety measures. She was simply taking precautions. Any other ninja foolish enough to wander out into this storm would only see what they expected to see when they looked inside her overnight shelter. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was a bear or a large mountain cat. Either way, they would not see Sakura.

The cave’s floor was uneven layers of rock, so Sakura didn’t bother lying down and trying to get comfortable. It would be futile. The walls were as uneven and scraggly as the floor, but she leaned back against the back wall, using it to support her as she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her head between them. Her stomach gurgled, protesting its empty state, but Sakura deftly ignored it.

She had chosen her spot specifically because it was furthest from the cave’s opening, and a small outlying pillar offered her minimal protection from the blustering winds that howled outside. Sakura huddled back further as thunder rolled once more and lightning lit up the dark circle that lead outside in a blinding flash of white. Then the heaven’s poured, and the torrential downpour, the drumming of its fall echoing around her, hindered all visibility. She couldn’t see through the continuous stream of water cascading over the cave’s entrance like its own personal waterfall.

Every time the thundered boomed overhead, Sakura pressed her legs closer to her and wrapped her arms around them a little tighter. Knowing it was irrational didn’t stop her from being afraid of thunderstorms. They weren’t common in Konoha.

The first one she remembered was when she was four. Her mother had been preparing dinner and her dad wasn’t home from work yet. Sakura’s mother, never liking having her young daughter underfoot as she cooked the evening meal, had shooed her out of the kitchen. Unable to jump into her father’s arms when the first rumble sounded, Sakura had hidden in the hall closet, shaking and crying.

Her parents, frantic with worry when she hadn’t answered their calls to come to the table, eventually found her sleeping, curled up underneath the heavy coats with twin tracks of dried tears on her face.

And that was how Sakura coped with thunderstorms ever since. She found a small, enclosed space, usually dark as well, and made herself as small as possible. Sometime while she was still young, she had started to sing the lullaby her mom used to sing her to sleep to, having found focusing on the sounds she was making drowned out the sound of the thunder.

“Baby's bed's a silver moon,   
Sailing o'er the sky,   
Sailing o'er the sea of sleep,   
While the stars float by.

Sail baby sail,   
Far across the sea,   
Only don't forget to come   
Back again to me.

Baby's fishing for a dream,   
Fishing near and far,   
Her line a silver moonbeam is,   
Her bait a silver star.

Sail baby sail,   
Far across the sea,   
Only don't forget to come   
Back again to me.”

Sakura sang softly, repeating the lullaby over and over until the soft melody was all she could hear. Eventually, she fell into an uneasy sleep. Simply being in the Land of Lightning was enough to prompt horrific dreams of her time during the war.

Corpses as far as the eye could see belonging to the five elemental nations that had come together to protect Naruto and Killer B from Madara and his grand plan to put the entire world into a genjutsu. The overpowering stench of hundreds of rotting, burning bodies. The blood, so much blood, that was a permanent fixture on the grounds where they had fought and bled and died. Explosions. Ninja crying out in pain. The scratching of when swords and kunais ground against each other, locked in a desperate struggle for survival. The feeling that she would never be clean; that she could never wash away all the blood on her hands. Some days she would glance at her hands and see dry, crusted blood under her fingernails. Madara’s hysterical laughter.

The faces of those that she had failed to save swam before her. Glassy eyed in death, pale as a sheet, and cold as ice. Nonota. Ruka. Ensui Nara. Okisuke. Natsu. Ran. Yukai. And dozens and hundreds more. It was enough to make her doubt her purpose at times, when, as skilled a medical ninja as she was, she felt like she was losing more than she saved.

Sakura jerked awake when her head slipped from its position between her knees. Her hand automatically reached back for a kunai, only to freeze when it met air. Fresh off a shift from one shift from the hospital and with plans to return within two hours, she had not been wearing either her weapons pouch or her medical one. Both sat on her office desk; no use to her. It was a poor decision on her part to leave them behind, and if Kakashi or Tsunade-shishou ever learned of her rookie mistake, she was probably going to be forced to take on D-ranks for a month. She was never going to take them off after this. She was literally in the middle of semi-unfriendly territory with nothing but the clothes on her back. The red top with her clan insignia, covered by her green flak vest, short pink apron skirt with black shorts underneath and elbow protectors, were not the most protective of wardrobes. They certainly didn’t prevent her from being cold. The Konoha flak jacket alone could get her killed.

She could still hear the metallic clang and shink of weapons clashing violently against one another. And it sounded awfully close by.

The pinkette shook her head so hard she nearly gave herself whiplash. The fighting had been a dream. A bad memory. Nothing more. She was recreating the sounds of battle because the nightmare was so fresh in her mind. No one was crazy enough to be out crossing swords in this weather.

When the distinctive sounds of fighting continued, Sakura decided she had to know who it was, because now that she was paying attention to it, there seemed to be more than two people fighting. The metallic clang sounded too often to be from a singular fight.

Sakura crept along the dripping cave wall, keeping one hand on it for balance. She peered down at the valley below, straining to pick out the combatants through the heavy rain that was still falling.

“No,” she whispered, voice trembling as much as her hands. “This isn’t possible. It can’t be real.” The jounin stumbled back, lost her footing on the slick cave entrance, and fell hard on her butt. That pain would register as a dull ache when she woke the next morning.

The mountain rumbled and shaked around her, further solidifying the sight she had seen. But Sakura stoutly believed it wasn’t real. It couldn’t possibly be. A hallucination, maybe, brought on by her sudden spatial disorientation, dehydration, and lack of food. Or her mind was recreating memories. She would believe any excuse so long as it meant that the sight below her was a figment of her imagination.

There was no reason for the Third Regiment, looking wearier and smaller than she remembered, to be locked in battle at the base of the mountain. The war was over. They had won.

Sakura retreated to her corner, the words “not real,” falling from her lips over and over, as if giving voice to the denial would make the fighting and bloodshed disappear. She avidly watched the cave entrance, straining her ears to pick up the light footsteps of an approaching ninja over the rain. Hours later, stressed and scared out of her wits, exhaustion claimed her, and the woman remembered nothing. She would awake in the morning and write the whole thing off as a nightmare.

Or she would have, if not for her shelter being discovered.

* * *

“This is it! It is right here, Kakashi-sensei!” shouted a familiar voice, breaking through her sleep deprived haze. Sakura peeled her cheek off her leg; sure there was a matching red mark on her face to the one left on her knee.

 It was followed by the even more familiar voice of her one time sensei. Sakura tried to convince herself the goose bumps down her arms were because of the chilly misty mountain air and not because of fear. Kakashi was on a mission, but there was no way he was this far north.

“Mou, I’m not your sensei, Lee.”

“Then I shall call you Commander!” Sakura easily envisioned Lee saluting to the cyclopean man with his signature bright smile that shine bright enough to temporarily blind a person.

There was a heartbeat of silence. “Sensei’s fine.” Well, the man never was a stickler for rules and formal address after his team’s deaths.

“I sensed a genjutsu here. I assumed you would wish to know about it.” Lee’s genjutsu abilities had never been something to write home about, but what little skill he had had always been enough to detect an illusion, even if he couldn’t dismantle it. It would be her sensei and her most fervent admirer that found her when she didn’t want to be found.

Sakura’s sleep hazed brain didn’t register that she was about to be discovered until it was too late. Kakashi had already removed her genjutsu and advanced into the cave with Rock Lee at his side.

Green eyes blinked when Lee suddenly appeared before her. The man clad in green spandex was on his knees, eyes wide, as he reached a shaking hand out to touch her, like he couldn’t believe he was seeing her.

“Sakura?”

Kakashi practically teleported to the teen’s side at his fervent whisper. He, too, looked at her with turbulent eyes. She looked up at her sensei’s face, and flinched at the sight of blood still flecked in his silver hair. Unbidden, memories of battle fighting side by side with these two men raced through her mind, filled with cries of pain and blood and one instance where Kakashi ordered her and Lee to leave him behind.

Unthinkingly, Sakura flung herself at her former sensei, not noticing the cold bite of steel at the base of her neck. “Is this real?” she murmured lowly. Then she made the mistake of looking him in the eyes. The black on red doujutsu spun, and Sakura was unconscious.

* * *

Kakashi stared down at the unaware form of his lone female student. She had disappeared from the battlefield over five months ago. With no body to be found, he refused to believe her to be dead, no matter who told him otherwise. The silver haired jounin had spent every spare hour scouring the site of her last confrontation only to come up empty handed. His ninja hounds were unable to pick up her trail, so he had been forced to stop after two weeks.

He was told he had to let Sakura go. Forget the dead and focus on the living and the war at hand. Kakashi did not do that. Instead he held on tight, using the loss of his student to drive him forward.

Her disappearance had been another crack in his heart at the same time it served to strengthen his resolve to not let Naruto go the same way. Kakashi had already failed two of his students. The least he could do was keep his last one alive and safe.

Kakashi had never truly expected to find her alive. If she had been taken by Madara for whatever reason, the lunatic would never have let her go. Sakura would have been better off dead. Yet here she was, shrouded in genjutsu in a cave above their temporary camp.

Would they have found her had they not been attacked and he had issued the orders to stop for the night? Would he have noticed her chakra signature, weak as it was? Been able to pick it out from the thousands he was leading?

“Is it really Sakura-chan?” Lee’s question broke the silver haired man out of his reverie. The boy was vibrating with hope and he looked at his commander beseechingly.

The three words she had brokenly whispered echoed in the small cave. “I think so, Lee. I think so.” Thankfully, Gai’s protégé didn’t comment on the way his voice broke at the end of the sentence. He returned his kunai to its place in his weapons holster. Kakashi had not seen or sensed any genjutsu on the woman herself, but with those White Zetsus able to take the form of another person, he could not take any chances. Naruto was the only one who could pick out imposters by chakra alone.

The infamous Copy-Nin was trusting his instincts, which were right more often than not. Sakura’s reaction upon seeing them was nothing like he had witnessed of the Zetsu clones’ typical manner of interacting.

Kakashi was gentle picking her up. For all that she physically appeared to be fine, the young woman Kakashi saw before him was broken.

He handed her over to Lee, loathe as he was to do so. Kakashi wanted to maintain his hold on Sakura so that he knew this was real, and then the pair returned to the rest of the Third Division, which Kakashi immediately ordered back to Allied Headquarters. No one complained about the lack of rest when they caught sight of Sakura in Lee’s arms. Kakashi tried to shield her from their prying eyes, but he knew that word of their discovery would spread. He and Lee would take Sakura straight to the medical base, where she would be monitored until her identity was confirmed.

Was it wrong for him to want this broken version of his student to be real?

* * *

When Sakura awoke for the third time in two days, and was greeted with the white ceiling of a hospital room and the heavy, cloying scent of disinfectant in the air, she initially breathed a sigh of relief. It meant the whole thing, the burnt clearing, the war still being fought, Kakashi and Lee crouched before her with eyes full of both want and wariness, all of it was just a crazy dream she had because she had overworked herself one too many times. Maybe she ought to listen to her friends and take some time off.

The theory shattered upon closer inspection because her white walls were made of cloth. She was in one of the white tents erected by the medical corps, easily assembled and even quicker to disassemble. They were used during the war so they could relocate as needed but still offer privacy to the injured shinobi they were treating.

The second thing to register was the pounding in her head. She hadn’t had a headache this vicious since the one time she let Ino and Tenten convince her to go out for drinks. Sakura had consumed enough alcohol to put Tsunade to shame, and that woman’s blood was ninety-seven percent sake.

Sakura sat up, wondering why she was in an isolated tent and why there was nobody present. She could understand why Kakashi wasn’t there, the man was notorious for hating hospitals and that fact didn’t change just because it was a medical tent instead. Plus, he was busy commanding one of the army’s most used divisions ( _no he wasn’t_ her brain insisted _because none of this is real_ ), but surely Naruto would have moved in while he waited for her to wake up.

The rosette gnashed her teeth. Naruto most likely hadn’t been informed. Nothing would have kept the blond from her side if he knew she was hurt. She remembered seeing Kakashi’s Sharingan whirl. He had put her under for whatever reason. She had a tent to herself because they thought her to be dangerous.

The medic snatched up the small scroll at the foot of her bed. Individual clipboards weren’t practical, nor were there enough to go around. So the medical shinobi wrote down all the patient information, treatments done, recommendations, and the whole nine yards in scrolls. Viridian eyes scanned its contents, pay particularly close attention to the history and cause sections.

_Sakura Haruno, Chuunin of Konohagakure and apprentice to the Godaime Hokage , was labelled MIA November 26, in the sixth year of the Godaime Hokage. She was admitted to the Allied Shinobi Forces Medical Bay on May 11, in the seventh year of the Godaime Hokage._

_Patient’s body shows no signs of malnutrition, starvation, or dehydration, although she appears not to have eaten in over twenty-four hours. There are a few notable injuries._

_One scar on her upper right arm, beginning at her shoulder and is half the length of her upper arm. Mildly resembles burn scars but was not caused by fire._

_A laceration the left side from waist to hip._

_The first two fingers of her left hand and her right thumb were previously broken and reset._

_Several bones, see list below, show evidence of either old fractures or breaks, estimated to be two to five months old, that were previously healed._

The scroll, signed by Shizune, slipped from her nerveless hands, landing on the soft cotton sheet with a muffled thump. What in the name of the Sage of the Six Paths had Naruto done to her?

What Sakura had just read had to be a mistake. The war was over. Done and dusted. It had been more than a year and a half since Team Seven had defeated Madara. And she had never gone missing in action. If this was some kind of elaborate hoax, it was a cruel one. And a poorly designed one at that. How could anyone possible think she would fall for this tripe?

But there were things that didn’t add up. Like her list of injuries. She couldn’t remember ever acquiring each one, but sure enough, a quick scan of her body with medical chakra confirmed all the former wounds on the list.

None of her friends would deliberately injure her, and most certainly not for something as ridiculous as a prank.

She didn’t want this to be real. A dull, hollow fear flooded her stomach at the possibility that this wasn’t a hoax. It wasn’t uncommon in patients that had undergone severe trauma, especially mental trauma or hard enough blows to the cranium that induced bleeding in the brain, to dream subconscious desires and convince themselves that their dreams were real.

Sakura knew that she had been injured several times during the war. It scared her far more than she wanted to admit, even in the safety of her own mind, that the nineteen months of peace and being home in Konoha might be nothing more than a desperate want for the war to be over. To not have to fight for her life and those of her teammates and friends day in and day out.

But what other explanation could there be? If it wasn’t for the dates and Shizune’s signature on her medical chart, Sakura might have accepted time travel. Naruto and Yamato had done that once, an excursion neither had remembered until after they had returned. A paradox that ensured that the two men would indeed travel back to the city of Rōran at the right time.

But she didn’t think there was any jutsu in existence capable of moving someone forward through time. Just thinking it made her feel ridiculous.

If time travel wasn’t her answer, then what was? Everyone in this—world—Sakura decided to call it for lack of a better term, because she still wasn’t certain what was and was not real, was under the impression that the Fourth Shinobi World War was still being waged, that she had vanished from the battlefield without a trace and that she was still a chuunin, and that the date was May 11, in the seventh year of Tsunade’s reign, which was three days after Naruto asked her and Sasuke for help with the seal that had caused this.

Sakura picked up her chart again with numb fingers, eyes mechanically scanning in contents, looking for any evidence that might indicate an injury severe enough to cause her to imagine nineteen months of her life.

She was torn in two. Part of her wanted to find what she was looking for, perhaps blunt force trauma to the hippocampus and its surrounding cortical structures or the temporal lobe. An injury to either area would affect the storing of her long term memories and her ability to retrieve facts and events. But Sakura also wished for nothing, because she wanted the good memories to be real and prayed that whatever was happening to her was induced by contact with the Kyuubi’s chakra and that Tsunade-shishou would be able to fix it.

It was a frustrating endeavor, and a failed one at that, for she found nothing that remotely pointed to either heavy physical or mental trauma. In fact, the most serious injury listed underneath the history subheading was a broken elbow and two fractures in her left humerus from the disastrous mission to Wave.

It took several seconds for that information to sink in, and when it did Sakura blinked wildly, bringing the scroll within inches of her nose, as if reading it at a closer range would change the words written there. The pinkette hadn’t broken any bones on that escort mission, or ever at any point in her career for that matter. She was the only member of Team Seven that hadn’t been injured on that mission.

Green eyes roved the rest of the scroll, taking in all the details. Now that she was actually reading it and not just looking for key words, Sakura found several mentions of injuries that she had no recollection of. From the summary, she gathered that she had been tortured, and that was a hard pill to swallow.

Just what in the world was going on? This was too detailed to be a prank (Sakura had long since dismissed that theory because this shit just wasn’t something you joked about. It wasn’t anywhere near the realm of funny), she hadn’t been injured in any way that affected her ability to recall memories, and she most certainly had not broken the laws of time and space and mystically travelled into the future.

Sakura slapped a hand over her forehead. Could it really be that simple? She had referred to where she was now as a different world, because she couldn’t think of a more appropriate term to call it by. But what if it was a whole other dimension? Kakashi’s Mangekyō Sharingan allowed him to manipulate time and space, warping items, jutsus, and people between two dimensions.

Taking into account Naruto’s knack for making the impossible possible, Sakura had to seriously consider that the blond had transported her to another dimension. She stubbornly refused to acknowledge the fear and discomfort that came with such consideration.

The pink haired woman sagged back against her mattress. If Naruto’s seal was responsible, she was stuck here. In the back of her mind she realized that this scenario was worse than having dreamt the last nineteen months of her life. There was no way she would be able to rewrite the seal from scratch, and with no formal teaching in fuuinjutsu, she wouldn’t even attempt it had she had perfect recall and could remember every symbol. If this world was similar to hers, Jiraiya was dead in it as well, and Naruto didn’t start learning until after the war, so there was no one skilled enough to send her home.

Although that was kind of a moot point. They’d have to believe her wild story first, and there was a higher chance of Tonton sprouting wings and flying than there was of someone believing she had traveled from a different dimension with the aid of a jutsu written by Naruto.

That was how Tsunade found her apprentice when the famous medic stepped inside the tent, lying despondently and staring at the ceiling in a shocked stupor. Thankfully for Sakura, the Sannin attributed it to post traumatic stress associated with shinobi that had been held prisoner for months on end and had been resigned to constant pain until they were finally killed.

The first couple weeks, sometimes even months, of recovery were the most critical. The shinobi in question would often believe their freedom to be a trick, or not think they were safe enough and fear that their captor would return. For some, they were so lost in their instinct to survive and escape that they believed every set of walls a prison.

Still, Sakura swore, when her shishou pulled up a chair and spoke to her gently, yet insistently, that she would be extra vigilant. They wouldn’t always be able to attribute her out of character behavior to her supposed time as a prisoner. Eventually, someone would start asking questions and demanding answers she couldn’t give.

“Can you tell me the last thing you remember?” Tsunade asked, amber eyes alit with concern for her second and youngest apprentice.

Sakura didn’t answer immediately. Telling the truth was not an option here, but waiting before replying would make it seem like she was trying to think back to what happened before Lee and her sensei found her in the mountain cave.

“I woke in a clearing. It had been completely incinerated. I went south, to return to Konoha, taking shelter in the cave when the storm came in. Before that, I—I can’t.” The teenaged medic brought her hands up to her forehead as if to stave off a headache. “I’m sorry. I can’t even remember being taken.”

The Hokage pursed her lips, and for a minute Sakura thought she was going to be called out on her on her half-truths. It wasn’t like she had lied. She remembered everything since she had entered this world, and she retained all her memories of her own world, but even though she would be expected to remember something of her time in captivity, it was by far safer to claim to recall nothing. Not only was it true for her, but it meant not getting caught up in lies.

“Were you wounded when you awoke?” Tsunade asked cautiously.

“No,” Sakura blurted.

The famous medic nodded, acceptingly. “I thought so. The wounds we saw did not look to be healed by you. The residual scarring’s not at all like you.”

Tsunade then pushed off on her thighs and stood. “I suppose it was a long shot. And in the long run it’s really inconsequential. We changed battle plans and relocated several times since you were taken, so any information they may have extracted from you is outdated and useless. What matters is that you’re back and on the mend. I’ll have you back in your division by the end of the week. I’m sure that Kakashi will be glad to have you back.”

The jutsu monitoring her heart rate wailed. A honest reaction this time, not her just responding like she had witnessed patients do in similar situations. Sakura did not want to fight another war. Or the same one twice or whatever it would be. She had only just gotten out of one, and the aftermath of war was so much more brutal than living in one and participating it one.

“Sakura. Sakura!” Said girl was jarred out of her panic attack by Tsunade shaking her. “Listen to me. It’s alright. You’re fine. Take a deep breath and hold it.” Tsunade continued talking in that vein, instructing Sakura to breathe in and out in measured breaths until her breathing and heart rate returned to normal.

“I’d like to work in the Medical Division,” she said weakly.

Tsunade’s eyes softened. “Of course, I understand.”

She truly did, Sakura realized. Her shishou had lost her precious people, her brother Nawaki and her lover Dan, to war and senseless fighting between nations. That was when she developed her hemophobia. So Tsunade understood how fear could be paralyzing all too well.

“Now, I think there’s someone waiting to see you.” There was a twinkling in the older woman’s eyes. “You can come in now,” she called out.

And just like that, Naruto’s arms were wrapped around her neck. Sakura blinked, wondering if the Naruto of this world had managed to learn his father’s teleportation jutsu. Tsunade laughed at her bewildered expression and left the two teammates to their privacy.

“I knew you were alive,” he said, and Sakura melted into his embrace, sinking into the warmth that was Naruto. His presence was comforting. Even if she hadn’t been missing for five and a half months, the her of this world had been, and it was easy to see in Naruto’s face that he had run himself into the ground trying to find her.

Sakura’s arms came up to wrap around him in turn. “I’m okay, Naruto. I promise,” she smiled brightly. The blond had enough problems on his plate. He didn’t need to worry about her.

Naruto withdrew far enough to look her in the eye. Intense cerulean orbs stared into her soul. Sakura fought to not look away, irrationally fearing that her friend would be able to tell she was not the Sakura of this world. “No, you’re not. But you will be,” he said adamantly. “You’re strong, Sakura. Stronger than me.”

The pinkette stared at him, flabbergasted by that admission. In what world was she stronger than Naruto? She ignored the voice in her head the snidely whispered that it was clearly this one. Naruto was the strongest person she knew.

Not just in terms of his skills as a ninja, although he was off the charts there and would go far if her Naruto was any indication of this one’s potential. This was going to get confusing fast. Sakura hoped she could keep the different variations separate in her mind. But his heart was strong. Naruto was pure. Selfless. Nothing could shake his belief, in himself, in his friends, in his village. He would do anything to protect his precious people, and his determination to do just that only made him stronger.

So how could he say in such a defeated tone that he was weaker than her?

It wasn’t possible. Naruto being seen as weaker than herself was like Kakashi showing up on time and not reading his smutty books. It just didn’t happen. Sakura was terrified of getting involved in this war again. Had it been the blond in her place, she knew that Naruto wouldn’t have hesitated to do his part. He would have been on the front lines again protecting his friends, even if they weren’t his but ones from another world.

Thinking about what Naruto would have done in her place made Sakura’s stomach churn guiltily, but she convinced herself she was doing the right thing for herself. She had briefly considered that her knowledge of her world’s war could prove beneficial, and then realized that it couldn’t possibly be helpful because hers had ended nineteen months ago and there must have been a drastic change in this one for it to still be going. So she’d have no guarantee that the two would be alike in any way.

Plus, she could save lives here. And maybe, if she got over her anxiety, she could enter the war efforts as a field medic. No fighting, just saving people who might die before they could be transported to the medical encampment, set up well behind the campgrounds of the rest of the army so it would be well protected.

Naruto had apparently continued talking while she had reasoned to herself why he was completely wrong. “B’s dead, you know. Well you don’t, because it happened after you were kidnapped. Oh I wasn’t supposed to say that! Baa-chan told me not to mention it or you’ll panic and then she’d have to kick me out and I don’t want to leave you alone. I just got you back,” he rambled.

She laughed lightly, which saw Naruto relax infinitesimally. He was rather adorable when flustered. And he looked so contrite for bringing up a taboo topic. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Naruto hung his head, slumping into the chair sitting beside her bed. His blond spiky locks hung in front of his face, shadowing his eyes. They probably hadn’t been cut since the start of the war.

“You don’t know that,” he said despondently. “Someone took you from me once.”

At this point, he burst into angry tears, and Sakura could only watch as Naruto fell apart in front of her. “It was my fault. Everyone out there, all the shinobi from all the villages, fighting day in and day out, dying left, right, and center. They’re dying for me. Sometimes I think it would be better if I surrendered to Madara.”

“No!” Sakura shouted. “You can’t! Handing yourself over to the enemy won’t do anyone any good.”

“But, Sakura-chan,” he tried to plead, “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt for me. Everyone will be happy in his Infinite Tsukiyomi. There would be world peace. No more hatred. And that’s exactly what I want. Why draw this out when we don’t stand a chance of winning?”

The sound of flesh striking flesh echoed in the small tent. Naruto’s cheek bore a red hand shaped discoloration.

“I already told you I was fine,” she growled, unable to contain her anger. How dare Naruto, of all people, considering giving up? How dare he try to use her as an excuse to stop fighting? It was his nindo, his ninja way, to never give up and to never go back on his words. “Madara’s genjutsu is not going to bring peace. It’s going to enslave us all. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a slave to that madman again.”

The second she spoke those words Sakura wanted to take them back. The idea that she had been caught in the Infinite Tsukiyomi hadn’t crossed her mind, but her memories definitely could have been a result of the Uchiha clan’s ultimate genjutsu. It was an obvious one in hindsight, although no less possible since Naruto was still alive and Madara didn’t have the Nine-Tail’s chakra.

Naruto reeled away as if she had slapped him a second time, hurt evident on his face. “I thought you didn’t remember the last five months.” His voice was strangled.

She didn’t know whether she should gape at him in disbelief, because it wasn’t like she had made personal enemies out of other shinobi and they were lining up to take her hostage, or admire that even as a shinobi, who by definition was a cold blooded killer, Naruto managed to maintain his innocence and naivety. 

“I don’t. But who else could it have been?” Sakura invented wildly, scrabbling to fix the blunder she had just made. She had just warned herself that she had to be careful with what she said and the first thing she did was insinuate that Madara was responsible for her capture. “No one else has reason to kidnap me. Maybe he thought you would come for me.”

Naruto snatched her hands up, holding them tightly between his own. “I did. I would have found you. I wouldn’t have stopped searching.”

“I know.” Just like they had never stopped searching for Sasuke, in hopes of bringing him back home before Orochimaru took over his body. Naruto had not given up then and Sakura had steeled herself to kill Sasuke so he’d stop causing Naruto pain. He would have never stopped looking for her.

“Thank you, Naruto.”

Shizune poked her dark head in, tossing a friendly smile in her direction, and insisted that Naruto wrap it up and leave Sakura to get her rest. He complained loudly that it hadn’t been fifteen minutes yet and the pinkette smiled seeing him back to his normal upbeat and loud self.

“Naruto,” she called after his orange clad back as he moved to exit her temporary living situation. “We’re going to win this war. You’re going to beat Madara. Then we’ll go back home and Kakashi-sensei will actually pay for a meal for once. We’ll make him pay for all the times he’s skipped out by going to Ichiraku’s and eating ramen until we’re fit to burst.”

Naruto turned around, a mixture of insecurity and joy shimmering in his blue eyes. “So don’t give up hope. Everything’s going to turn out all right.”

He flashed her a bright smile and ducked out of the tent. But not quickly enough to hide the crimson blooming in his cheeks. Her impromptu speech had been spoken with such confidence and sincerity because she already knew the outcome of the war.

Yes, it was different in this world. But the results were inevitable nonetheless. The Allied Forces could not afford to lose, and Naruto would go to any lengths to protect everyone he could. Madara had already lost and didn’t know it. It was only a matter of when the end would come.

* * *

Naruto was a constant visitor over the next couple of days. He popped by before reporting in to the Kages, brought his rationed lunch and split it with her, which Sakura greatly appreciated because hospital food was worse out here than it ever was back in Konoha (she swore blind that she had seen hers move), and snuck her out after dinner so she could walk around the encampment.

But, as thankful as she was, Sakura was desperately praying that someone else would step into her tent. Given the restrictions imposed on her, it was understandable that she couldn’t find a moment alone to hunt down Sasuke (It should be relatively easy. According to Naruto, he was part of the Third Division like her.) and see if he knew how the hell they were going to get home.

What she didn’t understand was why the asshole hadn’t come to visit her yet. He did not have limited freedom like herself.

Sakura nearly kissed the ground when Shizune finally released her from her clutches. Any day of the week, she wouldn’t hesitate to put in extra hours at the hospital. Tsunade often had to lay down a mandate to keep her from going in and there were a few occasions where she was forcibly removed from the premises. But Sakura loved her job. She loved being able to save lives. But she would pick being the doctor over the patient every time. Everyone thought ninja made the worst patients, always leaping out the windows before they were cleared to be released or only coming in over someone else’s shoulder because they collapsed. But they were wrong. Medic-nins were the absolute worst patients. Shizune had to keep one eye on her fellow apprentice so that she wouldn’t interfere with the healing process by trying to hurry it along herself.

Well, if he wasn’t going to come to her, she would find him. She would put her years of stalking the Uchiha to good use. Sakura cracked her knuckles and rolled her neck across her shoulders. Her parents had called her obsession unhealthy, and now as a grown woman she could comfortably admit it was, but it was damn useful at the moment.

Unfortunately for Sakura’s fraying patience, Sasuke was not in any of the places she checked. The only places she hadn’t looked had been his tent, because she didn’t know where it was, and the mess tent, because Sasuke wasn’t the type to linger and talk about the number of White Zetsu clones he killed over the midday meal.

With no other choice, the world traveler gave up on her manhunt.

Of course, the second she gave it up as a lost cause, Sakura turned the corner of a row of tents and ran smack into the man. Thankfully, neither took an embarrassing spill into the dirt, but Sakura was mortified enough that she hadn’t sensed him and nearly fell. She was a ninja, for the love of all that was holy (and no, she wasn’t referring to Naruto’s ramen). She was supposed to be on high alert. They were at war for the Sage’s sake.

Sakura took a hasty step back, looking up to say sorry, but her apology died a quick death.

Underneath the surprise he hadn’t been quick enough to hide, lurked a thunderous rage. Like Sasuke was trying with every fiber of his being not to express that ire. His black eyes practically glittered with malice. The dark haired man sidestepped her with a stiff “welcome back,” and stomped away, leaving her to gape at his back.

What was up with that reaction? It was like he didn’t know that Sakura had been found. No, she corrected herself, it was more like he was furious that she was back. And who the hell said welcome back to someone who had supposedly been tortured? “Glad you’re okay,” or hell, even, “Glad you’re alive,” was better than “Welcome back.” That made it sound like she had taken a voluntary vacation, which if the suspicions about this world’s Sakura were true, was the furthest thing from the truth.

Sakura stared at the spot where he had disappeared for several minutes after he was gone. That run in was the weirdest encounter she had had with the avenger. More asocial than usual. She didn’t know that Sasuke could be any more of a bastard. It was like this world’s Sasuke didn’t care for her at all. It made her wish for her Sasuke back, the one that she had made peace with. The one that had just admitted he liked her. At least she somewhat understood him. As opposed to this one. There was something vastly different about him, and she couldn’t restrain her urge to know what.

Guess she would have to dust off the Handbook for Stalking Sasuke Uchiha. Because she had questions, and he was potentially the only persons with answers.

* * *

The day after that literal run in, the Third Division was sent out again. The five divisions were on a rotation schedule so that one division wasn’t run ragged. That’s what they claimed anyway, but with the First, Third, and Fourth regiments gone so often, she suspected otherwise.

So Sakura didn’t have a chance to confront Sasuke. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Sasuke was her Sasuke. Not hers in the romantic sense, but that he had also come from her world. If that was the case, Sasuke probably believed himself to be alone here, and he wouldn’t know what had happened to this world’s Sakura. Acting distant was his way of keeping an army of ninja from looking at him twice.

It made sense to Sakura. Both she and Sasuke had been the test dummies for Naruto’s experimental jutsu (she was going to use this as an excuse to never test one of his prototypes again as long as she lived), and they had been alone in the Jinchuuriki’s mind when his furry friend had explosively evicted them. Which was almost certainly what had resulted in them being flung through space and time and into some kind of parallel universe.

That accomplishment alone was enough to boggle the medic’s mind. But the truth was impossible to deny. It wasn’t a dream. Way too surreal to be one, and while she had nightmares about the war and how it could have ended, she never dreamt of it lasting longer. Only that more had died because she failed to save them. It also wasn’t a genjutsu. Sakura could dispel any genjutsu with ease, although Sharingan based ones did require a little bit of effort. But it was made easy by knowing the infamous doujutsu was capable of ensnaring her in an illusion. After you met an Uchiha’s gaze, whatever you saw afterwards was almost guaranteed to be false. Knowing that what she was seeing wasn’t real was ninety percent of the work done. Once Sakura knew she was in a genjutsu, breaking free was simply a matter of stopping the flow of chakra in her body, and then applying an even stronger power to disrupt the flow of the her chakra. Usually by making it circulate in the opposite direction for a short time. With her phenomenal chakra control, dissipating genjutsus was quick work.

Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Therefore, the truth was that Sakura was in a world almost identical to her own, from the people to the events, but it was not hers.

There were enough differences when she looked around to hammer that home. Obviously, the still ongoing war was a huge hint. That discovery alone had been like getting hit by one of Tsunade’s punches. There were also the faces she glimpsed around base. People who had died in her world were alive here and vice versa. Although, Shikaku Nara and Inoichi Yamanaka, Ino’s and Shikamaru’s fathers, were still counted amongst those dead even though the Juubi had failed to materialize in this dimension.

Sakura was still on a strict no strenuous activities ban for two more days. When the ban was lifted, she reported to the processing tent. It was massive, easily one of the largest tents. Every injured shinobi was brought there first, at Tsunade’s insistence and to Ōnoki’s grumbling, so that medics could prioritize them for medical treatment according to the seriousness of their injury. No exceptions. Her shishou didn’t care if the world was ending, which was a distinct possibility if they lost. They couldn’t fight a war if her shinobi were dropping dead from internal injuries they ignored to deliver an oral report.

Working triage wasn’t her favorite job, but Sakura could usually tell with just a glance how soon one needed to be treated. Skin pallor, perspiration, fingernails, breathing, dilation of the pupils, dryness of the skin. The body gave off endless small clues for identifying ailments quickly without having to use chakra for a full body scan.

Before she knew it, more than a month had passed in this world. Tsunade called her into the Allied Forces’ war tent once a week, but Sakura adamantly answered each and every time that she had not recalled anything since the last time they spoke.

Her shishou warned her that it was dangerous to constantly suppress her memories. While she may have healed physically, Sakura wouldn’t be back to one hundred percent unless she confronted her memories and accepted the truth of what happened. If she continued to hide from them she ran the risk of something small triggering one violently. Maybe even a psychotic breakdown.

Sakura swore that a mind healer wasn’t need. There wasn’t any way she was letting a Yamanaka near her memories. She didn’t remember anything of the five and a half months this world’s Sakura had been missing, which made perfect sense because she had not lived them, but was also odd because, over time, Sakura knew everything her otherworldly counterpart knew.

She hadn’t noticed it until Naruto once told the tale of the one disastrous date they had been on. She knew it had to belong to this world’s Sakura because she had never accepted one of the blond’s invitations to ramen. Yet she remembered how stiffly the two of them had acted and how little they had talked. It was like putting a romantic label on top of their friendship had made them into complete strangers. Naruto had called it off half way through, proclaiming that they could never be together because she was more like family. He had then brought her home, pecking her goodbye on the cheek, and knocked on the door as soon as she closed it asking if she wanted to hang out because he was bored. They had gotten ramen (again, but Teuchi didn’t question them paying patronage to his stall twice in two hours) and made a beeline for the practice fields. Both agreed they were better friends than a couple.

So the woman found it highly odd that she had yet to learn just what had happened to her since she was taken off the grid in November.

Her memories weren’t the only things acting oddly around camp.

According to Naruto, the third member of their team spent most of his time away from the packed encampment. To avoid all those that would gladly try to stab him in the back for his brief stint on Madara’s side at the beginning of the war. And she said try because there weren’t many shinobi capable of getting the drop on the Uchiha and sticking a kunai in his spine.

But, ever since she had been brought back by Lee and Kakashi, Sasuke was spending increasingly longer amounts of time at their base. His dark hair and piercing stare were everywhere she went. His behavior was maddening to the pinkette, because it was further proof that he could be from her world, and yet he never once approached her.

Sakura emerged from the triage tent, wondering what Sasuke was waiting for and hoping that he hadn’t chosen now to fix his moral compass. Because she didn’t want to wait until the war was concluded to return home.

Amongst the members of Team Seven, they joked that Sasuke was notorious for his bad timing. Not in the same sense as their chronically late sensei, but in when he made life altering decisions, because it was always happening at the worst possible time.

Sasuke had switched sides in her world as well. He had done it towards the end of the war. Not even three months after he had joined up with the Allied Shinobis and the war was over. But he chose to do so during one of his insane ancestor’s moments of grandstanding. Madara had thought he had taken out the Fifth and Special Attack divisions, which would have been a crippling blow, but Sasuke, ingeniously, had used his Sharingan to manipulate a platoon of White Zetsus into leaching the chakra of every member of those two divisions, and Madara had wiped out a significant part of his own army instead. It had taken a lot of convincing on the Kage’s part, which Naruto play a heavy role in, but it was done with the Allied Forces’s cooperation and the knowledge that, if successful, Sasuke would be allowed into their ranks with minimal persecution.

It was bad timing because he had chosen to approach the Kages after he assisted in an attack that forced the Second Division to cede the land they had been defending. And he gloated about it when Tsunade unveiled that Madara’s attack had failed, while he was still standing at the madman’s side. Sometimes Sakura wondered why he had been labeled a genius, because none of his choices since earning his hitai-ate could be labeled smart even.

She supposed she could always approach him first, but Sasuke was a very unapproachable person. Not to mention that any time she came within speaking distance of him (which was quite large since they were ninja and had excellent hearing) he mysteriously vanished. Although she could still sense his eyes on her.

The trek back to her tent was a long one. Tsunade had ordered it relocated. Instead of being close to the multitude of medical tents on the camp’s eastern border, she now slept closer to the center of camp. They thought she was less likely to be stolen from her bed if said bed was near all of the highly defended Kages’ and division commanders’ tents.

She hadn’t walked by more than eight tents when she was dragged into the shadows between two by an arm around her midsection. It pressed a blade into her side. A large calloused hand, indicating that the person it belonged to fought primarily with taijutsu or weapons, clamped down over her mouth and nose. Unable to breathe, Sakura thrashed and struggled, bucking her hips back and digging her elbows into flesh. But the man stood firm, holding tightly until Sakura was on the verge of blacking out.

Just when Sakura thought she was going to die, and rather lamely at that she thought sardonically, the hand covering her mouth dropped to wrap tenderly around her throat. Of all the ways to die, being suffocated didn’t even make her top ten most likely.

She desperately gulped in air, praying that a lack of air wasn’t going to become a pattern. It was extremely painful.

“What do you want with me?” she gasped between lungsful of delicious air.

Sakura screamed when the kunai slammed into her. It was muffled by the hand that had come back up to cover her mouth, and once more her lungs were set to burst from not being able to draw in air. There were tears in the corners of her eyes from the unexpected pain. She cried unashamedly when the man dug the weapon in deeper and twisted it violently. The pain was agonizing.

“You know better than to question me,” came the sibilant tenor. Sakura stiffened. “You’ll regret leaving,” he hissed in her ear. “Enjoy your transient freedom while it lasts. You’re mine, Sakura. Don’t ever forget that.”

Sakura couldn’t see her assailant, what with her eyesight black from lack of air flowing into the brain, but she didn’t need to see him to identify him.

She went slack in his arms. He gently laid her on the ground. Hot and sticky crimson blood sluggishly poured from the wound, inhibited by the kunai he left within it. She’d recognize that voice anywhere. Her voice was no louder than a breath.

“Sasuke.”

* * *

There was absolute chaos in the morning when Sakura was discovered in a pool of drying blood by a three man patrol squad that had run directly into a trap of ninja wires and explosive tags. She was healed quickly and escorted to the war tent where the five nations’ leaders had already assembled.

Sakura tried to act appropriately shaken, but judging by the expressionless faces on all of the Kages she stood before, she guessed she hadn’t succeeded. In all honesty, she didn’t see Sasuke’s attack on her as such a big deal. It was not the first time he had tried to kill her, and by doing so he had told her exactly who was behind her kidnapping over six months ago. She also got her answer as to why they never put their heads together to plan how the hell they were going to get out of this world.

The jounin could understand their anger. In their view, someone had snuck into their most secured base and successfully attacked on of their own. It was even more concerning that their target had been Sakura, because it was the second time they had gone after her.

But, while Sakura understood their concern, their fear that if it happened once it would happen again, she didn’t share that she knew specifically who had choked her the previous night. It probably never crossed their minds that the enemy they were looking for might come from within.

She knew Sasuke well enough to know, despite this not being her Sasuke, that involving the rest of the army would only see to more people getting hurt. He didn’t care whatsoever about attacking her unprovoked. This was something she was going to have to handle on her own.

With that in mind, she recited that her attacker had been a male taller than she was with calloused hands. It described three-quarters of their own army, which was no help because they did not know of any shinobi on Madara’s side.

Sakura figured she ought to be concerned that Sasuke apparently had it out for her, but she found herself more curious than worried. Clearly, since he sequestered her away for five and a half months, his plans didn’t involve killing her. For reasons she couldn’t explain, even to herself, she wanted to know what made this world’s Sasuke different from the one she knew. And the only way to get those answers was stick close to the man like a primed paper bomb.

Which was why, when dismissed by the collective Kages, Sakura remained where she was, looking beseechingly at the Hokage.

“You have something to say, Sakura?”

The pinkette chewed her lip a moment longer as the woman’s eyes bore into her. She really didn’t want to, but she didn’t have much of a choice. “I’d like to return to the Third Division.”

Tsunade raised a sculpted eyebrow at her request, but appeared to be actually considering it. Sakura was reluctant to set foot on the battlefield once more, but she was even more averse to letting Sasuke out of her sight. If Naruto’s grumblings weren’t exaggerated, Sasuke would vanish at the end of battles and return to camp hours after the rest of the division. She was actually kind of surprised that Kakashi, Gaara, and Tsunade let him get away with that behavior.

Knowing what she did now, Sakura would bet a lot of money, a vice she avoided religiously being Tsunade’s apprentice, that Sasuke had been going to check on her. If she wanted to find her former prison, she was going to have to follow him.

She had berated herself for her sudden fear of fighting, of killing. She was a kunoichi. A proud ninja of Konoha. Killing enemies and targets, civilian and shinobi alike, was part of the job description. Yes, the war had been horrible, but it was not the first time Sakura had killed. Puppet he may have been, Sasori had still been alive. Besides, her enemies during the war had been monstrous clones of Zetsu’s white half, who were vicious and capable of assuming the appearance of anyone whose chakra they stole, and a legion of people who had been revived from the grave.

So it really shouldn’t be this traumatic for her. She should be able to throw herself into the war effort with no problem. Her current enemies weren’t ones that even Naruto could sympathize with. There’d be no war if the lovable idiot could work his magic.

“Very well,” Tsunade said at long last. “Starting next week you’re back on duty.”

“Thank you, Tsunade-sama.”

The woman smiled wanly. “Just don’t die. I’m not taking on any more apprentices. They take too long to break in.”

* * *

If there was one thing Sakura had always been good at, it was pretending.

As a young child, she had always been chattering away with her imaginary friends, the only ones she had until she met Ino. Her parents had grown concerned when she showed no sign of letting them go at the age of eight, so instead of speaking to them out loud, Sakura did so in her head. And thus, Inner Sakura was born.

To Sakura, her Inner self was everything she was not. In a word, perfect; another thing she was good at pretending to be. All throughout her academy years, the pinkette upheld the image that she was a perfect kunoichi, because she had memorized all the rules by rote and could recite them by heart. Backwards too. It didn’t take long for reality to shatter that delusion.

Whenever life became too stressful, Sakura fell into the habit of pretending her problems didn’t exist. And in rare cases, like Sasuke’s homecoming after the war, she actively avoided and ignored them. Just long enough for her to rein in her emotions, or simply take a step back and breathe, so that she could deal with the issue logically.

Currently, the jounin was pretending that she wasn’t in over her head. That putting herself back on the front lines so she could track Sasuke wasn’t a mistake.

She didn’t recall having this much trouble the last time she fought this war, but the last time she wasn’t simultaneously trying to keep tabs on her most wayward teammate, who despite sneaking away several times, she had never managed to follow. Sakura had had more close calls than she would like to admit. She had been saved by both Lee, who when she returned to her original world she just might finally go on a date with him as a thank you for saving her twice in another world (so long as he didn’t ask for an explanation), and Naruto, who was everywhere with his Shadow Clone jutsu. His clones didn’t hesitate to throw themselves in front of fatal blows. Sakura winced just thinking about Naruto getting those memories from the dispelled clones and fervently prayed that it would always be a clone that sacrificed itself for her and not Naruto himself.

But time wore on, and reintegrating herself into wartime habits became easy. Her reflexes were top notch. Her punches laid waste to Madara’s army. Her improved medical skills, from drowning herself in the hospital when her war ended, were responsible for saving many lives. Every time she had to watch as a fellow shinobi bled out beneath her hands, Sakura vowed to end this war that much faster.

So focused on doing as much good as she could, whether it be healing wounded ninja or smashing through a group of White Zetsu’s, Sakura utterly forgot her original objective for returning to the chaos that was the front lines.

Keeping an eye on Sasuke Uchiha, bastard extraordinaire. When she finally remembered, it would be too late.

It wasn’t long, just shy of two months, when the ancient Uchiha finally graced the Allied Shinobi Forces with his presence. Team Seven, the current generation’s heavy strike team, designed and put together to be destructive, was tearing apart his clone army faster than he could generate them. So it was only a matter of time before Madara confronted them.

While many quailed at his appearance, Sakura was glad for it. For it meant the war was drawing to a close, that Madara felt threatened enough to fight personally.

Funnily enough, Madara’s death came about the same way as it had in her world. Naruto and Sasuke had fought the megalomaniac head on, with Naruto, being the more impatient of the two, attacking foolishly and generally without a plan.

Naruto, with his endless reserves of chakra, spammed numbers of clones most shinobi never even dreamed of. He used just about every version of the Rasengan that he had in his arsenal, which was a fair few. Big Ball Rasengan. Planetary Rasengan. Twin Rasengan. His Rasenshuriken. It was basically his Rasengan Super Barrage with every available form of his favorite and most devastating jutsu.

Only he wasn’t attacking randomly. The blond’s relentless assault was serving as a distraction so Sasuke, when he did strike, could get in a hit calculated to do the most damage. He struck as quick as a snake with his electrified Kusanagi, flung about Amaterasu, his black fires of hell, like he was igniting campfires, and made liberal use of his Susano’o to both deal massive amounts of damage and to protect himself and Naruto. The major benefit to that strategy was that being inside the younger Uchiha’s Susano’o kept Naruto from being trapped in a genjutsu.

Sakura’s part in Madara’s demise was not so prominent. Every so often she would leap high into the air, a signal to her two teammates to clear out of the way and fast, and bring a fist down on Madara with enough strength to create a crater thirty meters deep and twice as wide. When Madara caught onto that trick, Sakura mixed it up so that the ground would shatter beneath his feet.

With no way to anticipate with attack she was utilizing, Madara had to clear out of the destruction radius. And having to do so quickly meant he had to follow Naruto or Sasuke, because the two men had already leapt to a safe zone.

So her role was actually quite important. She kept Madara off balance. Whenever Sasuke and Naruto were occupied, and the Uchiha ancestor was forming the hand signs for a jutsu, the jounin did her outmost to knock him off his feet and disrupt the undoubtedly horrible and lethal jutsu he had been aiming to unleash.

In a perfect moment of coordination, Sasuke shoved a Chidori into his ancestor’s heart while Naruto grounded a Kyuubi’s chakra mode Rasengan into the villain’s back.

Blood dribbled down one corner of Madara’s mouth. “Traitor,” he coughed harshly at Sasuke. The now officially the last Uchiha’s eyes were glimmering with cruelty and wickedness again.

Madara’s dying words confused Sakura, cutting through her celebratory spirit. This scene should have been hashed out when Sasuke first switched side’s months ago. Watched on by an army of several tens of thousands strong, the distinctive sound of chirping birds resounded as a Chidori crackled into existence.

Sakura realized his intentions too late. “Naruto!” she screamed.

The jubilant blond turned at the sound of her distress, exuberant grin slipping from his face when he saw Sasuke charging towards him, Chidori in the palm of one hand.

There was dead silence as the Uchiha’s hand pierced Naruto’s chest. Sakura faintly heard the sound of a woman screaming. It sounded an awful lot like Hinata, but the pinkette couldn’t be sure because all she could see and all she could hear were the two men in front of her. The rest of the world ceased to exist, wholly unimportant when Naruto was dying in front of her.

Sasuke ripped his arm out with a disgusting squelch noise and Naruto crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

That shook Sakura out of her horrified stupor. She sprinted forward on shaking legs, dropping beside Naruto and calling upon every last drop of her medical chakra. Tears streamed down her face, and some snot too. Naruto’s gaze, instead of staring at Sasuke with betrayal, was locked on her as she tried to perform a miracle.

“Just hold on, Naruto. I’m going to fix this. You’re going to be just fine,” she rambled, the hiccups and sobs interspersed making her nearly impossible to understand. “Kakashi’s going to pay for all the ramen you can eat. And you still have to become Hokage. You can’t die here. You can’t!”

Sakura screamed wildly as she was bodily pulled away from Naruto.

The green chakra enveloping her hands puttered out. She shook and trembled against the body keeping her away from Naruto.

“Nuh huh, Sa. Ku. Ra.” Sasuke taunted her. His voice dripped in her ear like poison. “Healing is against the rules. You honestly should know better by now.”

“Let me go! You bastard! I can still save him! You have to let me go!” There was a sharp crack. It was several moments before Sakura’s numb brain recognized that it was her wrist that had snapped.

Sakura stared wide eyed at Naruto, whose eyes were glazing over. She looked up to glare at the rest of the army, Kakashi and Tsunade in particular, to demand why they were just standing there when Naruto needed them to save him. The one time the Jinchuuriki truly required someone else’s aid and they were letting him down, letting him die.

The entire army was looking at the three of them blankly. Genjutsu, her deadened mind provided. She had no idea that Sasuke was capable of casting genjutsu on such an enormous scale. It could not have been easy, even with his Sharingan.

“Why?” she asked desperately. “Why would you kill Naruto?”

“Because he loves you,” was the cruel reply. “I won’t let anyone take you from me.”

Sakura knew that couldn’t be true. Naruto didn’t love her. Not in that sense. They were friends. Sasuke had to be lying. The snide voice in her head was back; this time saying that Naruto would pretend he didn’t love her if his love made her uncomfortable.

“Please. I’ll do anything you want. Just please, let me heal him,” Sakura begged. “I’ll do anything,” she repeated.

Sasuke chuckled. It was a dark and twisted laugh. “No, I don’t think I will. You’ll do whatever I tell you to anyway. This is your punishment. For disobeying me. For breaking the rules. You won’t be leaving me again, will you? Sa. Ku. Ra.”

She went limp against him as he laughed hysterically. This was her fault. Well not really. The Sakura of this world was the one to run away, but what did it matter at this point. She was still her. It was her fault Naruto was dead.

“No. I didn’t think so,” Sasuke continued hatefully. “The next time you so much as put a toe out of line, I’ll kill Lee,” he venomously spat.

Sakura sagged, defeated. Sasuke let go of her at last and she slumped to the ground. She couldn’t be responsible for another one of her friend’s deaths.

“I’m sorry,” she cried tearfully to unhearing ears.

To Naruto, who was dead because of her. Her promise of a happy ending just as broken as his body. To Kakashi, because she wasn’t quick enough to prevent this. Just like that time on the roof of the hospital which felt like a lifetime ago. To Tsunade, who would have to train another apprentice in her place. To all her friends, who she was betraying in order to keep them safe.

Those would be the last words she spoke until the end of her time in this world.

She bitterly tried not to think about how those had been Sasuke’s last words to her before he knocked her out and fled Konoha.

* * *

Sakura lost track of time. It wasn’t really important anyways. Her days revolved around Sasuke, blurring into a monotonous existence. A mockery of life.

Nothing mattered but what Sasuke wanted. His orders. His desires. His pleasure.

His every whim took precedence. Nothing else mattered.

It was a world full of pain. Sasuke was completely unhinged. Deranged. Insane. She didn’t have to do anything remotely rebellious for him to plunge a kunai into her shoulder blade, trap her in his Tsukiyomi and force her to watch Naruto die over and over again for seventy-two hours, where he blamed her for his death, or randomly break a bone. Those were his favorite punishments.

Mentally, Sakura had shut down. She functioned enough to perform what the bastard demanded of her, but nothing more. She didn’t want to feel the pain. Not the physical pain from Sasuke abusing her, but the emotional and mental pain. She couldn’t bear it.

She couldn’t reconcile this version of Sasuke with the one from her world that she had just made a working truce with. Yes, she knew her Sasuke had the capacity to be cruel, but of all the unforgivable acts he had committed before returning to Team Seven, he had never once done her serious harm. And, if the kiss she and her Sasuke had shared was anything to go by, her Sasuke cared for her whereas this one did not.

There was one part of her life that she was conscious of. Every time Sasuke took her, which happened frequently, Sakura temporarily froze her ovaries so they wouldn’t release any eggs. She refused to become pregnant with that demon’s spawn. No doubt the child would also be a monster.

Thankfully, Sasuke was too insane to know what she was doing, so she was safe from any repercussions. And so were her friends.  They were the only reason why Sakura didn’t fight back. Without insurance that she would win (was it weak of her that even after all he had put her through she struggled with the thought of killing him) it was too risky.

Or so she thought.

Sasuke was apparently not as unaware as she had believed him to be, though. He struck her across the face after he finished with her.

“You little slut!” he screamed violently, throttling her. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing! You’re going to stop that!”

“No,” Sakura said firmly, speaking for the first time in many weeks. Her voice was no louder than a whisper and came out all scratchy, but there was no mistaking her defiance. Her emerald eyes burned with an inner fire.

Sasuke punched her in the jaw. Her head was flung to the side. Sakura didn’t react in any way to her jaw breaking.

“I’ll teach you,” he said, crazed. “I’ll teach you just like I did Naruto.” The chirping of birds sounded glorious to Sakura. She had wanted nothing more than an escape from Sasuke. To die and join Naruto would be wonderful.

The Chidori tore through her. Instantly, Sakura coughed up blood.

Sasuke’s eyes widened frantically seeing the red substance spill from both her mouth and the hole he had just made in her chest.

“Heal yourself!” he demanded. The Uchiha grappled for her hands, setting them over the gaping hole in her body and staring at her expectantly.

Sakura smiled at him, blood covering her teeth and bubbling past her lips to slide down her chin. “No. Not today, Sasuke. I’ve been waiting for a moment when I could die.”

“No!” Sasuke spat, furious. “I won’t let you die. I won’t let you leave me. Not again. Not ever.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

Sakura only wished that she had died in her own world, surrounded by friends that loved her and would mourn her passing. She hoped she would see Naruto when she died, so she could apologize for causing his death.

She closed her eyes, drawing up an image of Naruto in her mind. She didn’t want Sasuke Uchiha to be the last thing she saw before she died. In her mind Naruto was as bright as ever, from his blond hair and his orange jumpsuit to his smile.

He extended an arm towards her. Smiling softly, Sakura lifted her own arm to grab it.

There was a searing pain on her right arm, and her image of Naruto vanished. Sakura stared in disbelief at her forearm, which now bore a strange seal that was glowing orange. The light emitting from her arm grew brighter and brighter until it was all she could see.

When the light died away and she sank into oblivion, Sakura did so gratefully.


	3. Chapter 2: AU 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Sakura is pleasantly surprised to find that she is not dead. Except she is, because she’s a ghost. Being dead isn’t going to stop her from finding her way home. Even if she is a ghost, it means she can’t haunt the Kyuubi for eternity. If only someone could see her.  
> Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship
> 
> Warnings: after the fact character death, grief dealt with in unhealthy ways, ghost!Sakura, a Sasuke that acknowledges his emotions, suicide is briefly mentioned and then abandon as an option, so don’t think it’s the answer, maybe a touch of victim blaming since this chapter’s Sasuke isn’t last chapter’s, references to previous trauma, and slight deviations from canon.
> 
> Rating: T

Sakura was uncertain how long she had lain in that spot. It seemed like ages to her since she had been engulfed by the orange light for a second time.

Only this time, she had not awoken to familiar surroundings. Instead the pinkette was surrounded by darkness.

She was too frazzled to discern just where she had ended up this time.

Actually, given that, best she could tell, she was in a sea of black nothingness and couldn’t feel a single part of her body—she had tried numerous times to simply wiggle her toes, but that was to no avail, she was probably dead.

She had never put a lot of stock into the idea of an afterlife. She listened to Kakashi’s tale of talking with his father after Pein’s invasion with a pound of salt because, well, it was Kakashi-sensei and he lied every day. The man only told the truth in matters of life and death or when his smutty novels were involved. And while yes, it technically was a matter of life and death (the jounin had died and was revived), he dropped the act when there were lives at stake. And when he had told Sakura that story he had been a little too cheery. His eye had curved into a crescent moon, something that happened only when he was about to force them to suffer in the guise of D-ranks missions that were super important to the security of the village; his words, always delivered with a special chirrupy tone.

Still, considering how she died, _which she could not think about right now, refused to think about, was absolutely not remembering because her mind would most certainly fracture further if she had to acknowledge Sasuke, **a version of him** , her brain helpfully reminds her, had tormented, tortured and raped a version of her, **you** , and she would be very grateful if her own subconscious wasn’t sabotaging her efforts to dissociate that world’s Sasuke and Sakura from hers, _the fact that she was now proof that alternate universes did exist, not that the pinkette would ever be able to prove it since she was in fact dead, and the image she had had of Naruto at the end, Sakura had found herself hopeful.

But the afterlife appeared to be nothing but a never ending expanse of emptiness and inky darkness. Black was all she could see, or was it she couldn’t see, and she sensed nothing.

And that was a tough pill to swallow. Sakura could almost believe that she had dreamt her traveling to some alternate universe where Sasuke had killed her, _which was the most she would admit to because Sasuke trying to kill her was nothing new_ , if not for the fact that she had not woken to Naruto’s concerned face hovering over her prone form, whether it be at her apartment, the hospital, or even still at their team’s training grounds.

Since that had not happened, Sakura could only assume that she had well and truly died.

In all honesty, she found it really hard to believe. She was having a lot of trouble wrapping her head around the fact that, barely eighteen, she was already dead. She had survived the same war twice, but it was Sasuke of all people that killed her.

And Naruto, her mind viciously reminded her. The other world Sasuke’s had killed the Naruto of that world as well. It was tantamount to killing her Naruto because the man had been exactly the same in both worlds.

Sakura closed her eyes, for all the good it would do her, against the onslaught of images. Naruto with a sizeable hole in his chest which was smoking slightly. The blood practically racing out of his body. The fury and cruelty and madness etched on Sasuke’s face when he turned his Chidori on her at the end.

The hardest part of it all wasn’t even that Naruto was dead or that her end had come at Sasuke’s hand. Nor that she suddenly had multiple memories of the same event. Sakura was well practiced in compartmentalizing her mind. Even everything she was not prepared to deal with was confronted in the form of her inner self. What caused Sakura the most heartache was that she had died in a strange world; not her own. There had been no breathless goodbyes to her closest friends and her team. She had died alone, a replacement of that other world’s Sakura.

She couldn’t think like that. It was ridiculous to assign blame for Naruto’s death when it wasn’t her Naruto.

Her eyes flew open as soon as Sakura realized she had actually managed to close them, all thoughts of her gruesome death vanishing to the far parts of her mind, where they would probably never be dealt with because she was unsure if her mind could handle the stress of acknowledging that a version of Sasuke had killed her yet she wasn’t dead.

Encouraged by the knowledge that she was not in fact dead, Sakura resumed attempting to move various parts of her body, to little effect.

A small part of the jounin was beginning to fear that she had wound up in a position just as dangerous as the one she had escaped from. She couldn’t help but think of all the possible reasons for why she was unable to move.

The top theory was that she was currently under the effect of drugs, which lead to the conclusion that she had been kidnapped again. That recurring theme was getting old quickly. Sakura tried to access her chakra network, in hopes of hurrying the breakdown of whatever it was in her system along, only to panic when she couldn’t locate it.

She couldn’t feel her chakra. What in the Sage’s name had they dosed her with? Which village was advanced enough to develop a chemical that completely cut a ninja off from his or her chakra? Kumo was highly militarized. Sakura wouldn’t put it past them to create such a drug. But chemical weaponry was Grass’s modus operandi. The village specialized in poisons and neurotoxins and other drugs that were almost untraceable once introduced to a person’s system.

Dying once had hurt, and the rosette was in no rush to experience it again. She prayed that physically dying wasn’t the key to moving to the next world. Not only was the idea horrifying and likely to turn her suicidal so she could return home, but Sakura was uncomfortable with the thought of killing other versions of herself in order to get back to her own world. She wasn’t going to die repeatedly until she miraculous woke up in her world. How many lives would it have taken to stumble back to her own world? Even one was regrettable, though she was confident that world’s Sakura would have also preferred death over a life of imprisonment at the Uchiha’s Sharingan.

Not to mention it was extremely creepy. She was going to find a way to kill the Kyuubi when this was over. Bijuu or not.

Thoroughly fed up, Sakura focused her every thought on throwing her upper body forward, not caring that it would be just as ineffective as her previous one hundred attempts to move, determined to regain control of her body by sheer will power alone.

Miraculously, it worked this time. “Yes!” she shouted with glee, feeling inordinately proud of herself for simply sitting up.

Until she suddenly found herself staring at a wall of dirt.

Sakura twisted her head around but saw nothing besides the soft brown soil. Had she been buried alive? She shuddered at the thought. From first-hand experience, she knew suffocating was an unpleasant experience, and it would be infinitely many times worse to suffocate trapped in a wooden box in the ground.

Her brain processes came to an abrupt halt. Logically, there were so many things wrong with this situation. Maybe she was dead or hallucinating because of a lack of oxygen flowing to her brain.

First, if she had been buried alive, she would have smacked into the lid of her coffin and not be seeing dirt. Second, the rationale didn’t explain why she still couldn’t feel stimulation from any part of her body. And finally, what possible reason could there be for Sakura being able to see the earthen ground through the tip of her nose?

“It’s a side effect of the drugs. It has to be,” she muttered at length. Sakura had no choice but to accept that she was out of her mind at the moment.

Without warning, her insubstantial body began to rise. The dirt remained stationary as she floated up through it.

In order to keep her mind from utterly shattering, Sakura chose to look at the positive side of things. For one, she just learned that the phrase pale as a ghost was inaccurate, as it implied they had some color. She had none. She was transparent. Completely invisible. See through. Intangible. Lacking matter and color and life.

The world loved its ironies, apparently, because Sakura found herself in a cemetery once on the surface. But she was pleased to note the polished granite headstones aligned in neat rows that bore the insignia of the Leaf Village etched under the name and the red flame shaped statue that represented Konoha’s Will of Fire in the distance, letting her know that it was Konoha’s graveyard.

The dirt around the grave she stood before was dark, indicating that it had been dug recently. There were two metal cylinders that held a mix of violet-blue, yellow and pink flowers. They were bright and cheery and Sakura thought it fitting that such lively plants graced this grave. And to think she finally found a use for the floral lessons all kunoichi were required to take.

The bluebells, flowers dangling over the edge of the cylinder, represented gratitude, and the deep pink almost purple flowers in the center were sweet pea representing goodbye. The yellow tulips interspersed throughout added a lot of warmth to the bouquet. Sakura only hoped the person who gifted them meant to say there had been happiness in life and not hopeless love.

Drawn in by the colors, which strongly reminded Sakura of herself, Naruto and Sasuke, she bent down to read the name carved in the light brown headstone.

_Sakura Haruno_  
March 28, 66 A.K. – June 6, 79 A.K.  
May the Will of Fire light the way to the next world.

Sakura, whose brain had shut down for the third time from the shock of seeing her own name on the grave, let out a strangled laugh. Because thus far, a bright orange light had shepherded her from one world to the next. Because she was dead again and hadn’t even had time to process her first death. Because she had to laugh so she wouldn’t think about how there was no rhyme or reason to what the next world would be like (she had at least thought time would continue to flow linearly, but that was obviously not the case), seeing as how she died in the Chuunin Exams in this one.

The second stage, if she remembered correctly. The Forest of Death. Morbidly, she wondered what had been responsible for her demise. The team from Otogakure? She had gotten lucky then, saved by the arrival of Lee’s and Ino’s teams. Or one of the numerous, unnatural beasts that dwelled within the dense forest?

Sakura was pulled out of her dark thoughts by the sound of approaching footsteps. Feeling rather foolish, she ducked behind a tombstone further down the row. She was transparent for the Sage’s sake. It wouldn’t matter if she hovered over the visitor’s shoulder, she probably wouldn’t be seen.

But whoever had entered the graveyard deserved privacy, so she wasn’t willing to test that.

A familiar head of silver came to a stop before the headstone marking her grave. Sakura watched her former sensei, whom simply stood motionless, unseeing eyes locked on the engraved rock. His mind was far away.

“I’m sorry.”

Sakura frowned at Kakashi’s apology. It was unexpected, because the man never apologized for anything. He just invented wild excuses that no one paid attention to. Those two words had carried an unbelievable amount of regret.

“I shouldn’t have let you sign up for the Chuunin exams. I knew you weren’t ready. How could you be?” he scoffed, anger thick. “It’s not like I taught you anything. You were my student for four months and the only thing I taught you was how to climb a tree.

“I told the Sandaime that I wasn’t fit to be a sensei,” Kakashi said wistfully, “but I didn’t have a choice. The council insisted that I be Sasuke’s jounin sensei. No one else would do.”

Sakura had never wanted to hug her sensei so badly before. She had never wanted to, period, actually, but that wasn’t the point. Kakashi sounded so broken, standing there in front of her grave extoling his failures with regards to his female student.

“You achieved your dream, Sakura. At least, I assume so, based on the glances you always threw Sasuke’s way and your introduction on the first day. He noticed you at last.”

If the rosette had still been twelve years old, her heart would have fluttered at earning his recognition. Either Sasuke’s or Kakashi’s. She remembered being pretty frustrated with her silver haired sensei at this point in time. Physical representation of her astral body aside, she was nineteen, not twelve.  Still it was nice be acknowledged by the jounin.

“You don’t know this, but you saved him. Leapt between him and Orochimaru. He couldn’t pull back in time and wound up biting you instead. Obviously, you didn’t survive, but you gave the ANBU and Hokage enough time to arrive and the snake ran.”

That mollified Sakura. She might be stuck as a ghost in this world, but at least her death hadn’t been in vain. Her sacrifice had spared Sasuke the Cursed Seal, and that meant so many things would change, the least of which might be the avenger’s decision to leave the village.

Surely that was worth dying for? She chose not to acknowledge the fact that Sasuke was two for two in being involved in her death, even if it was indirectly this time. She was quite frankly concerned that he would use her death as a legitimate excuse to exact vengeance on Orochimaru, since his first revenge plot helped fuel the Fourth Great Shinobi War.

“So I suppose I did teach you more than tree climbing. The value of teammates and working together.” Even though Kakashi couldn’t hear her, Sakura spoke the words with him. “Those who break the rules are trash, but those that abandon their comrades are worse than trash.”

Silence fell after his impassioned speech. Sakura rose from her crouch to stand at his side, pretending that the easing of his shoulders was because he could sense her presence and not because he had relieved his guilt by speaking over her dead body.

“I should be going,” he said after a long while. “We’re getting a new team member today. I’m five hours late.”

Sakura swore he said that last part with pride. She watched forlornly as he disappeared via shunsin, leaving behind a swirl of leaves. What was she supposed to do in this world? She was already dead.

Green eyes were drawn to the pile of discarded leaves. Well, she had nothing better to do. Why not follow her sensei and find out who they had chosen to replace her.

* * *

Sakura didn’t make it to Team Seven’s bridge.

It was stupid, really. He wouldn’t be able to see her, and it wasn’t like this Sasuke had driven a Chidori into her chest. He might not have even learned it at this point, considering her death would have disqualified their team. Unless she died after she reached the tower. Anko was a huge fan of exploiting loopholes, and the waivers never stated that all three team members had to be alive at the end of the five days, just that they had to reach the tower alive.

It really wasn’t important, because part of the third exam or not, Kakashi wouldn’t have started the Uchiha on the one jutsu he created yet.

But still, Sakura couldn’t bring herself to see him. She feared she would see only the insane version that had killed her, and she couldn’t handle that. Not now.

So she went to Ino’s home instead, hoping that the girl who was more attuned to spiritual energy, a requirement for a Yamanaka, might derive some comfort from her ghostly presence.

Her best friend slash love rival slash actual rival was an absolute mess. Her blonde hair was lank and oily, a sign that Ino had not showered in days. Her eyes were dull, sunken orbs of blue in a too thin, too tight, waxy face. Ino had clearly lost some weight, for her usual outfit no longer hugged her body.

Sakura might have mistaken Ino for a corpse if she hadn’t known better.

She dropped onto the bed next to her friend, who she had given up for a boy who couldn’t care less about her at the time. Sakura was firmly not thinking about the kiss they shared before she found herself flung into a world where Sasuke hated her. She was close enough that she could put her fingers through Ino’s.

“Oh, Ino. I’m sorry”

Sakura was sorry for many reasons. For leaving Ino behind in this world so abruptly. For allowing their shared feelings to come between them. For doubting the sincerity of her Ino. Once upon a time the pinkette had thought that Ino had only befriended her to make herself look better in comparison to Sasuke. The young girl’s devastation was proof of their bond. Since Sakura wouldn’t have the chance to give apologies to her Ino, this one would have to accept them.

Of course, her lament went unheard.

Sakura was suddenly struck with the realization that she was invisible. It wasn’t a concept she was unfamiliar with. When she was alive, she had faded into the background as easily as if she wasn’t there because she wasn’t anyone special. Just a girl from a civilian family with a preconceived notion of how romantic it would be to be a shinobi.

She understood, and truly didn’t begrudge Kakashi’s preference of the boys over her. What was she compared to the last Uchiha scion, who was so traumatized he probably shouldn’t have been allowed to continue in his chosen career and a very serious flight risk, and the jailer of the Kyuubi who also happened to be the son of his sensei the Fourth Hokage? Before everything had fallen apart, Sakura hadn’t put any effort into training and bettering herself. The invasion and its aftermath shattered her rose colored glasses.

Now it might as well be that she didn’t exist. Which she technically didn’t because she was dead, but that wasn’t the point. No one could see her. No one could hear her.

The blonde curled in on herself, broken fingernails digging into her comforter. She breathed raggedly, hiccupping occasionally, and dry sobbing because her tears had long since ran dry.

Sakura could only watch with frustration as her best friend grieved. Irrationally, she felt that this situation was entirely unfair, and she wasn’t referring to winding up in another universe. Wasn’t there supposed to be one person who could see her? Someone who needed her?

That’s how it worked in the books.

Ino was destroying herself in her grief. If her best friend didn’t still need her, then who did?

* * *

Sakura probably would not have noticed if not for Kakashi-sensei.

When Ino had failed, the pink haired girl had hoped that a Hyuuga might be able to interact with her. The clan’s kekkei genkai allowed them to see chakra, and Sakura reasoned that, since she still existed in an intangible form, she had to be made of spiritual chakra.

Hinata and Neji had proved incapable of seeing her, but Sakura had not given up so easily. She was certain that there had to be at least one person that could see her. Or at least, she desperately hoped so. Her time in this world would be heartbreaking if she could do naught but watch her friends and family from the sidelines wholly unnoticed as they picked up the pieces and moved on without her.                                                                                                                                                                                 

For nearly a month she had avoided checking in on her team, because even though she couldn’t be seen, she was avoiding Sasuke.  Sakura sank into the ground every time she so much as glimpsed black hair. She had tested it with the rest of her generation. On a lark she had also dropped into the Hokage’s tower for a week. A multitude of people from all walks of life had come through, usually by way of window or shunshin to Sarutobi’s exasperation. No one’s eyes widened in shock at seeing a young girl’s ghost sitting on the Hokage’s desk nor heard her explaining in explicit detail how his second successor dealt with the enemy that was paperwork.

There was one particularly delightful incident (to Sakura anyway) where it had accumulated on her desk, and being Tsunade, the busty woman had broken out the sake, claiming that she’d need it to stave off a headache if she had to complete that much paperwork. One of the mission requests had enraged her, causing her to slam a fist on her desk, upending her sake bottle. The alcohol quickly soaked a good portion of her workload, and in a stroke of extremely unfortunate luck, that was when Shikamaru answered his summons. His casual flicking of ash from the tip of his cigarette set the Hogake’s desk ablaze, and both shinobi had been too stunned to do anything more than watch as a week’s worth of requests and reports went up in smoke.

It was harder to tell what horrified her Shishou more. That she had accidentally lost a week of paperwork and several hours of actually doing her job, or that protocol requiring all things to be written out in triplicate ensured she lost nothing and that she had to start all over.

But Sakura could only haunt the other people in her life for so long. Inevitably, she was drawn back to Team Seven like a bad penny.

It had been four days since she silently observed her team’s daily practice. She had been insanely curious to learn who it was that replaced her. It was too early for Danzou to force Sai onto their team, not to mention he’d have no reason too. Sai’s assignment had been to kill Sasuke, and probably steal his eyes while he was at it.

After everything she had been through, Sakura would be hard pressed to label every enemy as evil. Orochimaru was one, for his callous experiments on children and disregard for their lives. Madara was another. Even without his Eye of the Moon Plan, which was only an illusion of peace and not worth all of the lives that had been taken in its pursuit, Madara had set Konoha on the path of destruction by sowing distrust of the Uchiha clan in the rest of the village. She didn’t view Kabuto on the same level. He was a broken man that had been betrayed on many levels.

But she considered Danzou evil. The man had committed numerous crimes in what he claimed was in the best interests of the village. Bloodline theft, sometimes not even waiting for the bodies to be buried. Child abduction and induction into his illegal ranks where he taught them to forget everything that made them human. He carried out his own missions and interfered with countless authorized ones. His actions, which were supposed to protect Konoha, endangered her, turning the Akatsuki from a group of resistance fighters into the greatest threat the village would face and sending Kabuto and all the information he had on Konoha to Orochimaru in gift wrap. It was a miracle that the silver haired man hadn’t simply run off to Kumogakure or Iwagakure and sold his knowledge and secrets to the highest bidder. Even as he lay dying he insisted that his actions had been right.

The new girl’s name was Shīru Kohaku. It meant seal in amber, which was apt considering her gold-orange eyes could stop someone in his tracks. The Kohaku clan was a minor shinobi clan that lived on Konoha’s borders, near Amegakure, and Sakura couldn’t recall them having any kekkei genkai.

She fit on Team Seven well enough and Shīru was more skilled than Sakura had been at this point.  She wielded what the jounin would call a modified nunchuck. Instead of two metal handles connected by a chain, there was one handle and the other was the hilt of a short sword.

Sakura didn’t see how that worked. Certainly a bladed weapon made the nunchuck more dangerous than a normal nunchuck, but swinging and twirling that blade around was just as likely to hit its wielder as it was its target. Plus, not being held in the hand, there would be significantly less force behind her sword strokes. They would be easy to deflect and incapable of causing much damage. Her misgivings aside, Shīru handled it with ease born from practice and familiarity.

Kakashi had them sparring the last couple of days. One on one, two on one, and an amusing, to the ghostly spectator anyway, one on three where he proved he is one of Konoha’s elite even though he doesn’t behave that way.

She watched from her spot in front of the memorial stone as he set the gennin to an exercise involving an unhealthy amount of explosive tags buried just beneath the surface and telling them not to get themselves blown up crossing the field.

Sasuke’s dark eyes shot in her direction again, something he had been doing often. Sakura had ignored it, knowing that he couldn’t see her and that he was probably brooding about her name on the stone, thinking her a fool for getting involved when he told her to run.

Her memories of this world had come much faster than the previous. She could recall with clarity the moment of her death.

She had been frozen, overwhelmed and shaking like a leaf from the sheer malice that was Orochimaru’s killing intent. Never before had she felt something so utterly terrifying. It was so fearsome that Sakura imagined her death in the space of a second. Her heart might have failed from shock if not for Sasuke jolting her to awareness by grabbing her and jumping into the trees.

From there, she had watched helpless as Sasuke, and then Naruto, tried to fight off the Sannin. And she remembered not even hesitating when the snake’s neck stretched and elongated. A slight difference in this world’s Sakura, she had learned to use chakra to run away from her bullies and prided herself on being as fast as Shunshin Shisui. In the blink of an eye she had positioned herself in front of her dark haired teammate, knocking him out of the way.

A pair of fangs sank into her neck and her entire body felt like it had been set on fire. At that point she lost consciousness. Immense pain was her only companion. Sakura zoned in and out of the land of the living sporadically, enough to know Naruto and Sasuke found an Earth scroll and made it to the tower, completing the second exam. The two had been allowed to continue onto the third part of the exam because, technically, she had not died in the forest. Because she had reached the tower alive, Team Seven had passed the second exam. The other jounin sensei, the proctors, and even the Hokage hadn’t agreed with her decision, but the purple haired woman had the final say with regards to the second exam.

In all honesty, Sakura wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t survived receiving the seal. She knew from research, and talking with Anko, that one in ten who received it survived the process, and Sakura hadn’t possessed a strong will. There wasn’t some ultimate goal that she had to live for. Not until Sasuke left the village.

Aside from being a unique, and vastly disturbing, experience, it was food for thought. Sakura wondered if that was how Naruto felt every time one of his Shadow Clones was dispelled. Retaining his clones’ memories would go a long way towards explaining his exuberant personality. How he managed to remain so lighthearted when faced with countless memories of his own death stymied Sakura, for she was still struggling with her three competing life histories.

“What’s the hold up, teme?” Naruto shouted from his position several feet away. He jumped about anxiously, shoving a fist in the air. “Kakashi-sensei said we only have until noon. That’s two hours, teme. If we don’t get started now we won’t finish and then I won’t be able to get ramen with Iruka-sensei and he’s paying and he can only come today and—“

“Shut up,” the black haired boy snapped, visibly irritated at Naruto’s ramen related rambling. Naruto blinked, then huffed, turning his back on Sasuke and proceeded to drag Shīru to the explosively rigged training field.

“No using your clones as fodder, Naruto,” Kakashi called, not looking up from his orange novel.

The blond tilted his head to the side, confused expression coming over his face. “What’s fodder?”

“It means your clones are expendable,” their sensei explained. “And you can’t use them to trigger the tags preemptively.”

“You mean I could have done that?” Naruto shouted, whirling to point an accusing finger at the jounin. “Just because you’re a lazy bastard doesn’t mean that I would cheat.”

In the time it took to blink Kakashi hefted the hyperactive gennin, punted him into the river, and returned to the tree he had been observing practice from, picking up his smutty novel once more and continuing where he left off. Naruto dragged himself out of the Naka River, orange jumpsuit sodden and dripping, and was shooting the jounin mutinous looks.

“That ought to make this exercise a challenge for you, Naruto. The excess weight is more likely to trigger an explosive tag,” commented Kakashi with appalling cheer.

Caught up in the excitement and chaos that her team was legendary for, Sakura completely forgot about Sasuke’s out of place behavior.

“Sakura.” Reflexively, the ghostly girl turned to answer the person who had spoken her name.

There was a glint of emotion in the Uchiha’s eyes, but it was gone so quickly that Sakura convinced herself that she had imagined it. It wasn’t like any look she had seen in his eyes before, and she considered herself an expert on reading Sasuke’s thoughts and feelings via his eyes.

Later, when she had time to review the situation, she would say that Sasuke looked triumphant. No, that wasn’t quite right.

Vindicated. It was more like he had confirmed something, done something impossible, finally succeeded where he had previously failed.

But she didn’t pay the matter any more attention. As soon as she had turned to look at him, Sasuke had stalked off to join his teammates, loudly scoffing at Naruto’s singed clothes and starting another argument between the two about who was better.

* * *

Not wanting to feel like some creepy stalker watching people while they slept, Sakura returned to her grave every night.

It wasn’t as lonely as it could be. Everyone in her graduating class had stopped by at least once. Kakashi came by every morning and Sakura wanted him to stop. Standing before her grave wallowing in guilt, punishing himself, was a waste. The past was the past. He couldn’t change what had happened.

The silver haired man carried plenty of baggage on his shoulders already. He shouldn’t have been so anxious to add her to that weight. Sakura had chosen to participate. She had understood that there was a chance she could die in the exams. She might have naïvely thought the proctors would prevent loss of life, because Konoha was not bloodthirsty like Kirigakure, but she had known going in that the Chuunin Exams would be nothing like the Gennin Graduation one. The other villages would not be as honorable as Konoha.

Even Anko had stopped by once. The short-tempered, provocatively dressed woman had been frank, denouncing Sakura as an idiot for getting between Orochimaru and his prize. She mocked her intelligence as well, claiming that an academy student would have known to run. It was just like that woman to shift the blame to someone else.

Then the sarcastic, tomboyish mask had been replaced with a sorrowful face as she genuinely lamented that Sakura should not have been in that position at all, and that it was Anko’s responsibility, as the proctor, to be aware of any deception. If she had caught on sooner, had listened to her instincts that had been fairly screaming that something was wrong with that kunoichi from Grass instead of dismissing her as weird, she might not be dead.

The only one she hadn’t seen was the avenger. But that was only to be expected. Sasuke had hated her as gennin. Rightfully so as she was little more than an annoying fangirl begging for his attention. Plus, he wasn’t the type to admit his guilt, even if he was in the wrong.

Not, for once, that this situation was his fault. That lied entirely with Orochimaru’s obsession with immortality and desire for the Sharingan so he could learn every jutsu that existed. It wasn’t like Sasuke had sent the nuke-nin an application for the opportunity to be his next vessel.

So Sakura could honestly say that she was shocked when Sasuke maneuvered through the cemetery, footsteps light as a ghost’s, to stand at her grave.

Curiosity drove her to perch atop her gravestone, where she silently observed the boy, whose face was shadowed by his bangs. Had he come to apologize, to claim responsibility for her demise in some way like her previous visitors? He wasn’t going to swear vengeance on her behalf, would he? That was the last thing she wanted, for him to run right into Orochimaru’s arms.

“How long have you been a ghost?”

For a minute, the cemetery was still. Sakura didn’t register his words at first, conversationally delivered; already anticipating they’d be an angry ridicule. Therefore, she felt completely justified in her overreaction.

She toppled backwards off her gravestone, and due to her lack in concentration, actually sank a few inches into the earth before she recovered. In a flash she was back up and standing before the Uchiha, who jerked back at her sudden movement.

“You can see me?” she whispered, strangled, hating herself for not knowing if the hoarseness was a result of disbelief or hope.

Of all the people she had actually been close to, whom she might have been able to comfort and ease their grief if only she could be seen, her parents and Ino most notably, it was Sasuke that could see her? She had wasted so much time avoiding him, fearing the effect looking into his eyes with or without the Sharingan, would have on her already fractured psyche. While she had desperately needed that time to come to terms with her trauma so that she wouldn’t be laying the blame at the feet of a twelve year old boy who had no idea other universes existed, never mind the atrocities that other versions of him would commit, Sakura couldn’t help but mourn her month of solitude. A month wasted searching for the one person whom she could interact with, and she had never considered that it would be the boy she had died to protect. And to think she had once prided herself on being the smart one.

Sasuke gave her his patented disdainful scowl, letting her know exactly what he thought of that question. “Of course I can.” The otherwise I wouldn’t have asked was unsaid, but Sakura heard it nonetheless.

“Since you got your new teammate,” Sakura answered.

She had avoided checking in on her team, because even though she had thought she couldn’t be seen, she still wasn’t ready to confront this world’s version of Sasuke. It was just her luck that the one person she didn’t want to see was the only one that could see her. The last four days had required all of her mental strength to not flinch whenever he happened to look her way, seeing his gleeful expression as he used her and killed her. As it was, she flinched every time his eyes bled red during training. Turns out it wasn’t just happenstance that he glanced over at her so often, but that he could actually see her.

His face briefly showed his surprise. “Over a month? I hadn’t thought it had been that long. I didn’t see you until four days ago.”

The pinkette was silent. She wasn’t going to share that she had been ignoring him with a determination that rivaled Lee’s. He wouldn’t take it well and would demand answers she couldn’t give. It was better that Sasuke believed her to be his guilty conscious, a figment of his imagination, anything that wasn’t the truth, so that when she disappeared he wouldn’t think twice of it.

“Why are you here?” _Why didn’t you move on? Why did you linger?_

Sakura bit back her first response, to blame Naruto, instead shrugging casually, “I don’t know.” Sasuke would come to learn with time that it was always the blond’s fault. The fool couldn’t go within three feet of a battle without getting the person’s life story and ultimately convincing them to quit being a bad guy.

The shift in expression was slight, but she caught the incredulous look he gave her. “Am I the only one who can see you?”

“So far, yes.”

“Don’t you feel alone?”

Sakura furrowed her eyebrows, studying her former teammate. Sasuke was awfully talkative and loose with his emotions. She half wondered if he truly did blame himself and seeing her ghost was the kunai that broke his back and now he was finally dealing with the trauma instead of ignoring it.

“Sometimes,” she granted. “Mostly during the nights when I can’t watch over someone. Well, I suppose I could, but I would feel like some kind of pervert.”

Her words had the intended affect. Sasuke snorted, ducking his head to the side and trying to cover it up with a grunt when he realized what he had done. Sakura’s grin stretched from ear to ear.

“Why did you do it?” His voice cracked with anger. The pinkette was unsurprised by the turn their conversation took. It was only a matter of time before he brought it up. “And don’t,” Sasuke hissed, suddenly furious, “say it was because you loved me.”

It was regretful, she thought, when the idea of being loved by someone else caused pain.

The next time she had to relieve the Chuunin Exams, Sakura was going to convince her team to head straight for the tower and avoid the possibility of running into the Snake Sannin at all.

After a minute and a half of silence, Sasuke adopted an annoyed expression, looking ready to stalk out of the cemetery. She didn’t know what answer to give him. The Sakura of this world had wanted to protect him because she cared for him. Sakura was hesitant to give him a response she knew he would dislike. Sasuke was not the ideal person she had envisioned being able to see her, but he was the only one and she didn’t want to chase him away. One month of watching from the fringes, unable to interact, was heart-wrenching enough. She didn’t know if she’d be able to handle being around Team Seven knowing that he could see her and was willfully ignoring her. If there was one thing Sakura hated, it was being overlooked. She had worked too hard, come too far since her gennin days.

“You’re one of my precious people, Sasuke,” she said at long last, taking a page out of Naruto’s book. Said boy was dissatisfied with her reply. “I wouldn’t go as far as to call it love, but I genuinely liked you. I wanted you to be happy.”

Sakura eventually discerned that the flame she had carried for her teammate wasn’t love. But it was still something. Infatuation. Puppy love. Call it what you will, she couldn’t, and would not, deny that she held strong feelings for him once upon a time. Feelings that were being rekindled by her Sasuke.

“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it is the truth.”

Sasuke’s displeased look didn’t budge. Gaze studious and contemplative, he turned away from her transparent form, dark eyes falling on her tombstone once more. The fingers of his right hand twitched, like he had wanted to reach out and trace the inscription but restrained himself.

“I haven’t been loved for a long time.”

The pinkette felt distinctly awkward at that admission. It was something rather private and she didn’t think she was supposed to overhear him.

“After what _that man_ did, I convinced myself that love was a weakness. Emotions were weakness. They’d only prevent me from becoming strong enough to achieve my goal.”

Was he really going to spill his darkest secrets to her? In a convoluted way, it made sense. It’s not like she could tell anyone else. Why was it she always had to do something extreme to get his attention? But she really wasn’t comfortable with this. Sakura had trained as a medic-nin, not a psychiatrist.

“I can’t care for anyone. He’ll kill them. I can’t lose another person.”

Sakura’s dead heart was breaking. She had never imagined there had been a motive behind his keeping his distance; that Sasuke feared if he came to care about his team that his older brother would swoop in and take them from him.

Nor had she thought that her death would take such a drastic toll on him. He did have a heart underneath that bristly attitude. One that had been pushed to its limits when his clan and family was massacred, and Sakura’s death just might be the reason he gives up on love altogether.

She wanted nothing more than to hold him close and tell him that he was wrong. Of course he was loved. This world’s Sakura had loved him. Naruto saw the broody bastard as his best friend and brother. And Kakashi cared, too, in his own weird way. But she knew Sasuke would ignore her if she tried to convince him of that, so she instead chose to correct his misconceptions about emotions hindering his progress.

“That’s not true, Sasuke.” She laid a ghostly hand on his shoulder and he looked up, revealing red rimmed eyes. It wasn’t the right moment to tell him that Itachi was the anti-hero in the story and not the bad guy. But it was the perfect time to push him into following Naruto’s ideals. “Just look at Naruto. He becomes stronger when he has someone to protect.”

Sasuke looked away, not wanting to acknowledge the truth in her words.

“We’re stronger as a team. Look at what we managed against Zabuza? We could help, if you’d let us,” she offered gently.

He snorted, derisively rolling his eyes in her direction. “How are you going to help? You’re dead.”

Sakura ignored the venom in his words, a plan already forming in her mind. Now that she was dead, Sasuke found it easier to talk to her, to drop his mask and stop guarding himself. She had learned more about him tonight than she had in all their time on Team Seven.  If the jounin stayed by his side, ingrained herself in his life, he’d learn to trust her. At that point, she’d be able to reveal Itachi’s truth. Hopefully, she could keep him from going ballistic and vowing to destroy Konoha.

Currently, what Sasuke cared most about was use. Specifically, how useful people were to him, and she was in the unique position to be of the most use to the dark haired avenger. All she had to do was prove it, and tomorrow was the perfect opportunity to do so.

“Ne, shouldn’t you be heading home?” she questioned, none too subtly changing the topic, knowing that her teammate would take her silence as she intended it, uncertainty. He would better accept her invisible help if it was his idea. “The finals of the Chuunin Exam are tomorrow, isn’t it?”

The dark haired boy lifted one shoulder in a lazy imitation of a shrug. “No one there is strong enough to beat me.”

Sakura hid her smirk, knowing just how wrong he was. It was too bad the village would be invaded; she would have enjoyed watching Naruto beat him. One lesson Naruto Uzumaki had taught the world was that limits were only for fools that believed in them. Or even Gaara. Though she really shouldn’t wish for that because the Suna Jinchuuriki was more likely to kill Sasuke at this point in time. Without the Cursed Seal to aid him, Sasuke was at a disadvantage.

There was no denying that the Uchiha was talented, prodigal even. Even with only afternoon training sessions with Kakashi after he dismissed Shīru and Naruto, the preteen had grown in skill. But the next day’s matches would end differently because this Sasuke was not her Sasuke. Whether or not he would win she would never know, since the combined Sand and Sound invasion disrupted his match.

Would there be an invasion tomorrow? Now that Sakura considered it, Orochimaru might not follow through with the rest of his plan since he failed to give the Cursed Seal to Sasuke.

The Sannin wasn’t the type to give up easily, and no she did not just think about how Naruto was the same. Because they were totally different. It wasn’t like the invasion had anything to do with his desires to have the Uchiha as his next vessel. He wanted to deal a devastating blow to Konoha by killing the Third Hokage, so chances were the plans to attack were still in motion.

“You’re coming to watch.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she answered, though he hadn’t actually asked a question. If nothing else, Suna had no reason to call it off, and Sakura should be there to help him. “Good luck.”

“Luck is for weaklings,” he scoffed. Sasuke opened his mouth to say more, but then shut it, exiting the graveyard abruptly. The rosette watched him go.

How Sakura wished she had something to distract herself with other than her dark thoughts.

* * *

Sakura figured she ought to be surprised that Sasuke wasn’t amongst the potential chuunin lining up in the arena. After leaving the village, the dark haired boy had developed a knack for showing up dramatically in the last place they expected to encounter him.  Of all the bad habits Sasuke could have picked up from their sensei, he chose the worst one.

The rest of the competitors, lined up before the proctor to show them off to the crowd, were as Sakura remembered. Ino, shaken by her death, had quit when the opportunity was presented to her at the preliminaries.

Naruto exploded into action when Genma called for the match to begin. The blond persevered when others would have forfeited, and with a decoy clone, burst out of the ground to sock Neji in the jaw. It was as awe-inspiring as the first time, and true to himself, he convinced Neji that his negative view of Hinata because of her position in the Hyuuga clan and his hatred of the clan were misguided.

“I’ll change the Hyuuga clan, when I become Hokage!” he declared.

It was a nice sentiment, although the Hokage didn’t have the power to dictate how a clan operated. But, Naruto’s ability to change people’s hearts worked just as well on authority figures as it did on their enemies. Young Hanabi, emotions as jaded as her cousin’s, would eventually become clan head, because Hinata could not as the Hokage’s wife because of conflict of interests (and every person across the Elemental Nations knew it was only a matter of time before the blond was given the hat and married his girl), was also changed by this battle, seeing her talented cousin unable to move as Naruto regaled him with a tale of how he failed the graduation exam three times because of his poor excuse for a clone. She would wrestle the Hyuuga into a more modern mindset, doing away with the seal and branch house.

Kankuro chose not to withdraw, but she wished she had since his match was rather uneventful. Pitted against Shino and his hive of chakra leeching bugs, he didn’t stand a chance. Breaking and reforming his chakra threads didn’t prevent them from reaching his puppet, crawling into the joint and rendering it immobile.

Of course, it was all a distraction so that Shino could plant a female kikaichū upon him. The males in his colony could track her scent anywhere, so Kankuro’s switching his body with his puppet trick failed to deceive his opponent. No less than he deserved. If she remembered correctly, he had pulled something similar in both the first and the preliminary stages of the exams. One-trick ponies did not last long in the shinobi world.

The kikaichū descended upon him, swarming until every inch was covered in the chakra eating bugs. Kankuro collapsed, screaming, as he was quickly drained of chakra. Distasteful as it looked, Sakura would have kept her mouth shut. She had no desire to accidentally swallow an insect. A shudder ran down her spine at the thought of it.

Sakura would say that Shikamaru’s battle was interesting, but that would be a lie. Describing it as such would imply that the Nara heir put in more effort than was necessary to make a splash and show off all his chuunin-esque qualities. As it was, he would be the only shinobi awarded a flak jacket. Still, for someone who claimed fighting and girls were troublesome, the center of his strategy was to draw out the match by making Temari lose her head. It was a simple task, because the Suna kunoichi loathed how laid back he was and his lack of ambition.

When the time for Sasuke’s match finally came, the gennin in question arriving just before his match was announced, the rosette couldn’t contain her anxiousness anymore. She abandoned her haunt up in the competitor’s box to hover beside Genma. If an invasion was to occur still, she wanted to be nearby to warn Sasuke.

Dark eyes flickered in her direction. Sakura waved cheerfully. “Good luck.”

Sasuke, shooting a heavy glance at Gaara’s serene form, rolled his eyes. “I don’t need luck.”

Genma tongued the senbon in his mouth, eyeing the Uchiha curiously. The clan’s arrogance was well known, and Sasuke appeared to have it in spades, but from what he heard from Kakashi when he dropped by the jounin station, he was also a man of few words. Plus, he couldn’t help but notice how the boy didn’t direct the statement at either him or Gaara. Had he suffered a mental break with the death of his teammate earlier in the exams? Was he checked over at all?

It wasn’t really his prerogative, so beyond a decision to let his jounin sensei know, Genma announced the start of the match and leapt back to the wall so he’d be a safe distance from the fight.

Intangible as she was, Sakura saw no reason to move. She remained between the two preteens as they sized each other up. Looking at it objectively, there was no decisive outcome. Gaara had a nearly impenetrable defense that protected him unconsciously, one he could manipulate without hand signs. Sasuke was fast and combined that speed with heavy hits that were meant to be devastating attacks. Plus he had a trump in the Sharingan which would allow him to cast genjutsu and keep up with the future Kazekage’s speed.

Knowing this, and exactly what went down during his month of training, Sakura was surprised. Her teammate was nowhere near as fast as she expected.

Sasuke tested his opponent’s sand. His form moved fluidly as he shifted from quick uppercut jabs to low kicks to spinning on his hands and slamming his calf into Gaara’s chest. The sand shifted perfectly in tune to absorb the blow.

He jumped back, studying the red head once more, not impressed, but intrigued by the challenge his sand defense presented. Sakura couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease him.

“What was that about not needing luck? Because no one who was left was strong enough to beat you?”

Sasuke was irritated by her teasing. She could tell by the way his eyebrows almost knitted together. But he deftly ignored her, something she was used to after years of experience. Sakura was unbothered by his attitude. Now that he had tested the waters, so to speak, it was time to get serious and step it up a notch. He couldn’t afford to split his attention between her and his deadly opponent. She was just pleased she was able to rub his cockiness in his face.

“I like a challenge,” he said at length. “Proves that I’m stronger when I win.” Sakura nodded her head sagely.

“Of course,” she said patronizingly. “Unless you lose because you underestimate Gaara. Do me a favor and don’t take as long as Shikamaru. I’m not sitting through another two hour battle.”

Sasuke shot her another sharp looking, whether because he understood her hint that speed was necessary to defeat Gaara or in response to her calling the red head by name, she didn’t know. In retrospect, it wouldn’t do to be familiar about the friends she had made in her universe. Sasuke would pick up on the tone and she would be stuck scrambling for decent explanations as to why she spoke Gaara’s name with fondness. Honestly, it was difficult to not love the guy. Once he had gotten over his homicidal tendencies (meaning that Naruto had knocked the value of friendship into him), the sand wielder was easy going. He had opened up his home to her for a brief stint when she was on loan to Suna’s hospital for a week. And what an insane week that had been, trying to get the doctors, nurses, and volunteers into a semblance of working order.

Perhaps he had seen underneath the underneath, because the Uchiha’s next series of blows were delivered at a greater speed. However, it still wasn’t enough to get pass Gaara’s guard.

Sasuke’s frustration was easy to see in the tense way he held himself. It was the one thing that she found surprising about him. Sasuke, for all that he pretended, felt emotions as deeply as Naruto. It didn’t take much to work him up. The second he lost control in a fight, he also lost his handle on his emotions.

As she expected, after a smattering of attacks that failed to get through Gaara’s sand defense, Sasuke retreated up the arena wall, hands flashing in a familiar sequence.  The sound of birds chirping increased, growing louder until they drowned out all other noise. Sasuke’s arm shook from the force of the jutsu as he continued to pour chakra into what would become his signature technique. And wasn’t it ironic that Kakashi’s lone original jutsu would be stolen and evolved by an Uchiha.

In the blink of an eye he was racing across the arena floor, his Chidori scarring the ground.

Sakura froze. The stadium around her vanished. In its place was seventeen year old Naruto, pierced through by Sasuke’s hand. Blood dripped down the back of the orange jacket. It was the Uchiha, face twisted in insanity, as he plunged his electric coated hand into her own chest.

* * *

Kakashi was a man of many masks. He had layers of them, and not just the physical masks that hid the lower half of his face. His students had tried to see underneath once, but their attempts were all too obvious. And in Sakura’s case, ill-planned. Why she thought he would remove his mask before the memorial stone he couldn’t fathom. Her name was now on that very stone. She was one more on a list of people he needed forgiveness from.

The jounin slouched slightly at the thought of his deceased student, something that only Gai picked up on. His self-proclaimed eternal rival didn’t comment, didn’t act beyond a quick glance, before boisterously commenting on Sasuke’s flames of youth, and a snide remark that his speed would never compare to Lee’s. It was easy to know what was on Kakashi’s mind. He should be attending this event with a full team of gennin, maybe even see all three of them earn promotions. Gai was feeling the same, with his star pupil in the hospital with no chance of recovery.

His extravagant behavior was just another layer. The Icha Icha novels absolutely were works of genius, but he giggled over them in public to keep everyone else at a distance. Everyone he was closed to suffered. His father. His team. His sensei. Kakashi wished he had been strong enough to send Team Seven back to the academy, gone against the Council’s wishes, but how could he turn away Obito’s and Minato’s legacies?

Sakura had paid the price for his incompetence. Torn between not wanting to coach green gennins and teach them the realities of the world that existed outside their classroom, and wanting to honor  the teammate he hadn’t appreciated until it was too late, Kakashi’s female student had fallen through the cracks. It didn’t help that she reminded him of Rin at times. Sometimes, he would look at her and see Rin’s scared brown eyes as she begged Kakashi to kill her so Iwagakure couldn’t use her to unleash one of the Bijuu on Konoha.

The tell-tale sound of his own original jutsu pierced the dark fog surrounding his thoughts. “So soon,” he murmured, watching the Chidori crackle to life in Sasuke’s palm. The boy only had enough chakra to use that particular technique twice, so he couldn’t afford a mistake. He needed to make this attack count.

“His speed needs work if he ever wants to master that jutsu,” Gai mused next to him. “I could train him, if you’re willing?”

Kakashi turned to show him his lone eye. Sasuke would swear vengeance on him next if he agreed to the Green Beast’s proposal. “Hm? Did you say something?” The silver haired ninja promptly ignored Gai’s rant on how he was so hip and cool. He often acted oblivious, but there was no one in Konoha with a sharper eye. Kakashi’s mind was a steel trap. It needed to be in order to protect where he had previously failed.

Sasuke’s attack slammed home, penetrating the ball of sand the Suna shinobi had hidden behind. The blood curdling scream that followed told everyone that Sasuke had hit his target.

The crowd roared their approval, but Kakashi cared naught for the fight. He cared about the pale form that suddenly appeared just to the side of the battle. Even washed of all color, he would recognize that figure. But he could see her with all the color and detail she had possessed in life.  The bright pink hair which matched the beautiful flowers she was named for. Sparkling green eyes, always eager to face the day. The joy in her laughter when she challenged the boys to a race, who were always too stubborn to refuse.

“Sakura?”

Even lacking color, she looked washed out, like a child when her worst nightmare came to life. Eyes glazed over, trapped in her own memories. Had Kakashi overlooked something about the Forest of Death? She couldn’t have seen the Chidori before. The bridge had been covered with fog when he had slain Haku. She didn’t have a horrible memory to associate the sound of the Chidori to.

But even as he watched, Sasuke’s Chidori dissipated, and his female student’s transparent figure vanished. She must have been a figment of his guilt, manifesting only now due to his maudlin thoughts about how Sakura should have been there.

Perhaps it was time for Kakashi to leave the past in the past.

* * *

Sakura forced herself back to the present. She didn’t have time to think about the previous world. This was it. If there was to be an invasion, it was going to start now. Viridian eyes scanned the stadium. She was uncertain if the invasion would come to pass, since Kankuro had actually fought his match against Shino. But just like last time, civilians and shinobis alike were falling victim to the wide area genjutsu, slumping in their seats or listing completely out of them.

The other two thirds of the Sand siblings jumped down to the arena’s floor, landing on either side of Gaara. With shared looks of uncertainty, they grabbed their brother and hauled him away. But they didn’t move towards the forest. Instead they took off in the direction of Konoha’s center.

The only thing there was . . . “The Hokage’s Tower.”

Sasuke’s head whipped to the side. “What did you say?”

“They’re heading for the tower, but I don’t understand why?” There wasn’t enough space for Gaara to fully transform there. Not to mention they were guaranteed to be waylaid by every Leaf shinobi they came across.

Unless they intended to unleash Shukaku in the center of the village and let him destroy everything. It would be just like when Madara summoned the Kyuubi. Konoha would be faced with one of the Bijuu with no forewarning or preparation.

“Sasuke, listen,” she said urgently.  “You have to follow them. Your opponent is a Jinchuuriki. He holds one of the Bijuu within him.”

His eyes were blown wide in surprise. “Like the Kyuubi?” he demanded.

“Exactly. If Gaara releases his Bijuu in the village—“

“Konoha will be decimated,” Sasuke finished evenly.

“Just like it was twelve years ago.” Sakura saw no problem dropping hints about Naruto’s secret.  The law only said that no one could tell Naruto about the burdened he bared. It was a law made in blind ignorance anyway. Only the Sandaime could believe that the village would treat Naruto as a boy and not a demon. Sarutobi was lucky that the blond was literally the densest person to exist, or he would have put two and two together during his first year at the academy. Hopefully, once Sasuke understood where Naruto’s power came from, he wouldn’t be quite so gung-ho and willing to do anything necessary to acquire it himself.

“Ah, good, you’ve already figured out for yourself the danger we are facing. I have a mission for you, Sasuke,” Kakashi said seriously. “This will be your second A-rank mission. Chase down Gaara no Sabaku and defeat him. Do not let him release the One-Tail.”

Sasuke scoffed. “I was already going to do that. Bastard can’t just run away from a fight like that.”

“This is not an exam any more. This is war. There won’t be a proctor to call an end to the match. If you can’t treat this situation with severity I’ll have you seeing civilians into the tunnel as you should be doing as you’re still a gennin.”

Sasuke grit his teeth at the blatant threat. Sakura laid a hand upon his shoulder. “You know he’s right. If not for the fact he’s your jounin commander and his orders exceed any but the Hokage’s, shinobi are supposed to defend those that cannot defend themselves. We are not just murderers in the night.”

She probably should be concerned that she felt no guilt over revealing state secrets, but Sakura couldn’t bring herself to care. The decisions made surrounding the Uchiha clan and Naruto were just horrendous.

“I understand,” he said at last.

“Good, and Sasuke,” their sensei called as the preteen prepared to leap away, eye twisting into the crescent moon shape that spelled bad news, “I want to talk to you and Sakura when the dust has settled.”

Sakura, baffled, wasn’t given the chance to respond as both her comrades ran off. Since when could Kakashi see her? She was half tempted to chase the man down and demand answers, ghost or not she would kick his ass if he had been capable of seeing her this whole time and had done nothing, but she couldn’t waste the opportunity to prove her use to Sasuke.

Catching up to her teammate was simple. All she needed to do was follow the trail of destruction leading in towards the heart of the village. Judging from the wide scale devastation she was seeing, Sakura assumed Gaara was already partially transformed.

When she finally caught up, it was to the site of Gaara, layered in sand to create human sized Shukaku limbs from head to knee, his lower legs were still human. His black eyes vibrated in their sockets. It was an eerie sight to witness. Sakura idly mused how Sasuke must feel to have such an unsteady gaze directed at him.

“Blood!” the Suna nin cried. “Mother demands it! Your village will drown in blood to prove my existence!”

Sakura shuddered at the unintentional reminder of Pein’s invasion, how he had decimated the village entirely before Naruto had intervened.

“You need to stall him,” she ordered Sasuke. “Kakashi will send Naruto along shortly.”

Sharingan eyes glared at her. The pinkette’s flinch went unregistered. “I don’t need his help!” snarled Sasuke. “Gaara is my fight.”

“Have you lost it? Kakashi literally just told you this isn’t about him being your opponent anymore. You are a shinobi of Konoha and it is your duty to defeat him. So forget about the damn promotion and work with Naruto so that he doesn’t kill any more of our people!”

Maybe it was due to her cursing, but Sasuke visibly took a deep breath and centered himself. He was then forced to leap up and away to avoid a barrage of sand projectiles.

“And what would you recommend?” he bit out once she settled beside him again.

Sakura laid out her plan. “Don’t use your Chidori yet.” She was very careful to not trip over the name of that jutsu. “You’ll only be able to use it once more, so you’ll have to make it count. He’s currently focused on you. Naruto’s clones will be a great distraction, but until he gets here you need to keep Gaara’s attention. Lead the fight away. Outside the village if you can manage it, but a training ground would suffice. It’ll minimize damage and lives lost. Naruto’s been working on a summoning contract. If Gaara fully releases the One-Tail his toads will be able to help.”

“Toads.”

“Giant toads,” she cheerfully clarified. “Also, if you know any water jutsu, it might slow him down.” Sasuke glared balefully. He was well aware that she knew he did not possess any water jutsu.

“What about his siblings?”

Green eyes flickered in the direction of Kankuro and Temari, both of whom were cowering on a nearby rooftop. Blindly loyal enough to point their youngest brother in the direction of the Hokage tower, but not trusting or courageous enough to fight beside him to get the job done.  From what Gamakichi of all beings had eventually cleared up for her, Gaara’s siblings hadn’t interfered until he had been beaten. “They’ll most likely follow but won’t get involved. They’re more terrified of him than you are. I wouldn’t worry about them.”

Sasuke nodded, trusting her analysis of the situation. His opening salvo was his clan’s Great Fireball jutsu. The blistering ball of fire raced between the two ninja. Sakura winced at the resulting damage of using a 3600 degree fire on a crowded street. Several building fronts were already warping. Gaara batted the attack away, seemingly unharmed. The building to his left erupted in flames. The dancing shadows behind him and the hypnotic gleam of the fire reflected in his eyes did nothing to quell Sakura’s concerns that the Uchiha would last long enough for their third teammate to arrive.

Sasuke seemed to sense this was the best opportunity he had to move the fight to other advantageous grounds. He balanced atop a power line, spat a, thankfully, smaller fireball at his enemy, and retreated in the opposite direction of Gaara’s final goal. The Suna nin gave chase eagerly, still screaming about how his existence would not be denied and how Shukaku wouldn’t be satisfied until he was drenched in the blood of his enemies.

If Sakura wasn’t already aware of what a shitty childhood Gaara had had, raised solely to be his village’s weapon and how he would move on to overcome it and become Kazekage, she would have felt pity for him. What was the world coming to when Naruto’s life of neglect, isolation, harsh words, fearful stares, and an occasional drunk beating were considered decent in terms of the lives Jinchuuriki lived? Only Killer B could claim to have lived a semi-normal life.

She laughed when she cottoned on to Sasuke’s plan. Not having any water jutsu in his repertoire, an oversight he would be sure to fix after the invasion, he had lead Gaara to the hot springs.

“Well?” he taunted levelly, easily finding perching on the shift water surface. The ever rising steam distorted Gaara’s, who had come to a halt at the edge of the baths, view. Sasuke, shrouded in the center, had given himself the advantage. Thanks to his Sharingan, he wouldn’t be fighting blind, and Gaara now had to be extra cautious due to the presence of water. “I thought you were going to kill me!”

Gaara gave an inhuman, shrill scream of rage. This time he launched sand projectiles from every part of his body, followed by a vicious sweeping of his arm, the length of which had been extended by the addition of more sand.

* * *

Sasuke retreated further, thus avoiding the blue veined limb, arms crossed in front of his face to protect his eyes from the sand, mind furiously tossing aside every jutsu he knew. He was aware of three water jutsus: the Great Waterfall technique, Water Clone, and the Water Prison. The former two were definitely too advanced for him. While the latter was a C-ranked jutsu, he had never used it before. Plus, his affinity for fire natured jutsu would make utilizing a water technique that much harder.

But he knew, once trapped inside, the water sphere was inescapable. Kakashi had been unable to break free of Momochi’s until he and Naruto had intervened, forcing the missing-nin to drop the technique or lose his arm. Hopefully, it would hold against a rampaging Jinchuuriki.

The only downside, aside from it being a jutsu he had never used, was that it was short range. He’d have to get monster to come onto the water, and then Sasuke would only have one chance to trap him. If he failed, regardless of the reason for doing so, the Suna nin wouldn’t step foot on the water.

He dug into his weapons pouch and dug out eight shuriken. Temporarily holding them between his teeth as fingers raced through the required hand seals. “Fire style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!” he cried, hiding the four-pronged metal stars within the many fireballs.

It wouldn’t amount to more than a distraction. He rather doubted that the either attack would pierce the demon’s sand armor, but he couldn’t stand around waiting for his idiot of a teammate to make an appearance. He honestly wasn’t sure what Sakura was thinking. Naruto might no longer be the dead last he had been in the academy, but he still wasn’t stronger than Sasuke. He didn’t need the dobe’s help to defeat Gaara. He just needed to slow down the monster enough that he could hit him with another Chidori.

* * *

“On your left,” Sakura warned him. He nimbly danced out of reach of several sand javelin projectiles which retreated back to their source.

The pinkette cursed the fact that she was dead for the umpteenth time, as it left her unable to sense chakra. How much further was Naruto? Surely the blond had already left the stadium. Sage forbid Kakashi hadn’t sent him and Shikamaru as back up this time. Even he wasn’t foolish enough to let Sasuke face an uncontrolled Gaara alone, right?

Sasuke released another fire technique, this time using his chakra to manipulate the path of the fireballs so that they came at Gaara from behind in an attempt to force him on the water. This attempt similarly failed as Gaara wasn’t even inconvenienced by the fireballs.

Luckily for her, for after that unsuccessful attack Sasuke looked like he was contemplating moving the fight back onto solid ground, Naruto leapt forward with a primed kunai, which he sank into the sand flesh at the base of Gaara’s tail and detonated.

Sakura couldn’t help but open her mouth to uselessly berate the idiot, when he went up in a puff of smoke. Her blond teammate was certainly getting more strategic in his use of unending copies of himself.

The force of the exploding tag that had been wrapped around the kunai’s handle propelled Gaara into the water.

“Did ya see that, you bastard?” Naruto did a jig as he crowed.

“You idiot! Don’t just stand there.”

Before he could respond to Sasuke’s scathing retort, Naruto was knocked underwater as Gaara reemerged, sloughing off layers of sand. If possible, his black eyes looked even more crazed.

“Water Prison Jutsu!” Sasuke shouted, only to be flung aside by a giant sand tail as his water orb collapsed. Sakura was impressed the water had even come up from the surface of the baths. Naruto spammed Shadow Clones, using them as cover and to fling himself at Gaara with extra force whenever he saw an opening.

From there, the fight proceeded much like she had been told, seeing as she had missed out on witnessing the majority of it first-hand. Naruto’s unconventional ‘handbook’ made him vastly unpredictable, allowing him to land several strategic blows. Backed up by Sasuke’s heavier hits and now more effective fire jutsus, the duo quickly pushed the red head into fully releasing his demon.

Naruto’s clones then went from providing overwhelming numbers to acting has physical shields, jumping in front to take the brunt of Shukaku’s devastating attacks. If this fight had gone down anything like this in her world, Sakura wondered whether she should admire Naruto’s tenacity or scold him for having the self-preservation instincts of a gnat.

“How long are you going to wait before you summon a toad, dobe?”

“Have you been spying on me, teme?” He asked, even as he bit down on his thumb to draw the necessary blood to activate the jutsu. “How’d you know I was learning the summoning jutsu?”

Surprisingly, Gamabunta the chief toad appeared on his first try. Sasuke immediately asked if the toad was capable of water jutsu, earning himself a derisive acknowledgement. For two creatures as massive as they were, both Shukaku and Gamabunta were capable of moving fast. The sudden rainfall from colliding wind and water bullets was torrential and short lived. But after every clash Sakura could see Naruto and Gamabunta directing Shukaku further out of the city.

Sakura’s undead heart stopped beating for one terrifying moment when Naruto and Gamabunta transformed into the Kyuubi. Unable to look at the beast, partly because of her fear and partly because she might start screaming obscenities at him for being responsible for her current situation, she turned to find Sasuke’s gaze riveted on the Nine-Tailed Fox.

She could see the moment all her of none too subtle hints about Naruto’s Jinchuuriki status clicked into place.

Gaara’s defeat was all downhill from that point. The Kyuubi’s claws sunk into Shukaku’s shoulders. Naruto undid his combined transformation, dashing up the sand demon’s head while Gamabunta’s now webbed appendages grappled uselessly. Sasuke slammed home his last Chidori in the demon’s leg.

Shukaku howled in pain, remaining oblivious to the human running up to where Gaara partially protruded from his brow. His sand defense was still automatic it seemed, but not a match against a determined Naruto, who slammed his own head against Gaara’s and broke the red head’s transformation.

The duo watched from a distance as Shukaku crumbled into particles of sand, leaving both his host and Naruto to free fall several hundred feet.

“We’d best fetch Naruto. He’s bound to be exhausted after a transformation of that scale.”

Sasuke jolted from his thoughts, and spurred by her words quickly made tracks towards where their teammate fell. They found him, blood streaming down the right side of his face, unable to move any part aside from his neck, using his chin to drag himself closer to Gaara’s fallen form as he gave the speech that inevitably was the driving force behind the Suna ninja’s desire to become someone his village would respect.

Sasuke easily arranged to carry the now unconscious Naruto by draping one of the blond’s arms around his neck and tucking him to his side with an arm on his waist. Sakura spared a cautious back glance at the other two thirds of the Sand Siblings, who had crawled out from whatever tree they were hiding in to pick up their defeated brother. They would eventually become good friends, but she wouldn’t put it past them at this point to attack them when their backs were turned.

The trio hurried back to the stadium, for lack of knowing where else to go. The fighting was winding down, as evidenced by their coming across Shikamaru and his jounin sensei on the way in.

Sakura knew intimately, eyeing the devastation left behind as Sand and Sound retreated, that it could be much worse. Even having lived through Konoha’s destruction multiple times, her heart felt heavy. She yearned for the days of peace that had come after the war where all she worried about was not getting reamed out by Tsunade for ignoring hospital protocol and avoiding her dark haired teammate like there was a trophy for it.

Pakkun was waiting to lead them to their sensei. Kakashi had made an obvious trail through the enemy hidden in the stands as he carved a path towards the special seating area for dignitaries upon which the Hokage and Orochimaru were still battling.

“How’d it go?” Kakashi asked conversationally, as if the beaten and bloody status his gennin were sporting weren’t indicative.

“He beat Gaara,” grunted Sasuke, adjusting the blond’s weight.

“Really?” his tone indicated he expected nothing less when he sent Naruto to aid his teammate. Sakura could see how its casual delivery rankled Sasuke. His eyes hardened at what he viewed as a dismissal of his abilities. She knew it to mean the other jounin was preoccupied.

Kakashi’s gaze finally tilted their direction, eyes flashing from head to toe, tallying physical injuries. “And where did Sakura run off to?”

Said ghost gaped at him, unwilling to believe her sensei had somehow contracted Naruto’s foot-in-the-mouth tendencies. Couldn’t he have taken a minute to praise Sasuke’s performance? Sure, Naruto had dealt the final blow, but he wouldn’t have had the opportunity if Sasuke had distracted Shukaku with a Chidori. Not to mention he had handled his own against an extremely unstable Jinchuuriki for several minutes. He had really only gotten thrown around by the concussive force behind Shukaku’s air bullets.

At the silver haired man’s question, Sasuke’s eyes darted to the side, checking that she still hovered in his line of vision. Once assured that Sakura was indeed present, the dark orbs snapped back onto their sensei.

“Hallucinating, sensei? You should get your head checked.”

Kakashi’s normal eye curled into a cheerful U shape. “I’ll give you points for trying the old head injury excuse, but I saw her before you pursued Gaara.”

Sakura pressed against Sasuke’s side, hissing under her breath for no reason other than it conveyed their shared annoyance. “How’d he see me in the first place? If he’s been ignoring me for a month I’m gonna have to ask you to give him One Thousand Years of Death.”

“Gladly,” was his muttered rejoinder.

“There you are!” Kakashi said brightly. Sakura blinked owlishly at him, only to realize he was indeed staring at her and not just accurately directing his gaze at a point over Sasuke’s uninhabited shoulder.

“You can see me?” the words came out just as tightly as they had the first time she spoke them only last night. Sasuke tensed besides her, shifting infinitesimally, just enough to move out of contact with her. Before her Kakashi frowned.

“You just vanished.” The pinkette wilted. Kakashi’s ability to see her, for whatever reason, was irregular. Still, maybe the longer she spent as a ghost the more people would be able to see her. “We’ll have to continue this later,” he said. “Looks like Hokage-sama is finishing up with Orochimaru.”

True to his words, the barrier surrounding the rooftop was dissolving. The Sound Four converged on their fallen leader, lifting him between them before the ANBU even reached the Sandaime. And damn if they didn’t need to train their reaction time. It was deplorable that Orochimaru’s henchmen moved faster than those that were supposed to be the village’s best and brightest.

“Take Naruto to the hospital. And let Sakura know that we’re meeting at eight tomorrow,” he ordered. He continued as Sasuke turned to leave, “and I do mean at eight. I want to have this discussion before Shīru shows up.”

* * *

Unwilling to hover creepily while her male teammates were sleeping off the after effects of battle, Sakura had returned to her plot, anxiously pacing while her mind imagined Kakashi asking all sorts of intrusive questions.

She thought tiptoeing around Sasuke’s triggers was hard enough, now she would have to lie to the master of lies. Everybody scoffed and rolled their eyes when Kakashi told one of his ridiculous over the top lies because they were obvious. He exaggerated them specifically to distract attention away from his actual lies. By delivering his false statements in the same manner he spoke normally, his lies passed for truth because everyone, even the Hokage for Sage’s sake, was inundated to believe that the only lies Kakashi Hatake told were the ridiculous ones to explain why he spent three hours standing before a memorial monument.

Unable to contain her nerves any longer, Sakura made her way towards Team Seven’s training grounds, where she continued her pacing. At least she was no longer pacing above decomposing bodies.

Sakura would likely be alone for a while yet, as it was several hours still before the sun was due to rise. Unconsciously, she found herself staring at her own name on the memorial stone. Trembling fingers reached out to tracing the engraving. How was she supposed to confront Kakashi in a couple of hours, knowing he had unwittingly spilled emotions and thoughts he kept close to the chest to her invisible ears? What about Naruto? Poor Naruto had no clue they’d be meeting, never mind discussing the ghost of a dead teammate that only he hadn’t seen yet.

How was she supposed to hide everything she wasn’t supposed to know? Sasuke was sure to mention several of the clues she had dropped, and while she could blame some of them on being an invisible ghost that could go anywhere in the village, Kakashi was still an elite jounin and would be able to suss out her lies.

Entrenched in her increasingly worrying thoughts, the rosette just about jumped out of her non-existent skin when Sasuke, carrying a half asleep blond on his shoulder once more, landed next to her. He dropped Naruto, who didn’t react, except to drool about his ramen.

Sasuke speared him with a disbelieving look. “I thought you’d want to tell him first.”

She bit her lip to contain her giggles. She knew he was thinking Naruto was ridiculous for being able to sleep so easily in the wake of an invasion. Though chakra exhaustion tended to have that effect on him.

“You mean you’ll tell him for me,” Sakura corrected. “Unless Naruto is secretly related to you, he won’t be able to see me.” Dark eyes looked at her quizzically. “I have a theory that only the Sharingan can see me. Couldn’t tell you why that is, but thus far only you and Kakashi have seen me. The Sharingan is the only you two share.”

The last Uchiha shrugged, conceding. It wasn’t like she had an abundance of Uchiha to test her theory on. Itachi, Obito and Madara were all directly related. The brothers were descended from Madara, and if her sensei could see her, it was only because he had one of his former teammate’s eyes, thus it reasoned that Obito would be able to see her as well.

It was unbelievable that her life—unlife?—in this world had come to revolve around the Uchiha clan.

“By the way, did you really kidnap him and sneak out of the hospital just to convince him you don’t need psychiatric help because you’re seeing ghosts?”

Sasuke determinedly ignored her.

* * *

Informing the blond of her presence went smoother than Sakura had imagined. Based off his reaction to Yamato’s scary stories, she was expecting hysterics on the level of covering his ears and attempting to talk over Sasuke.

He started ranting loudly about Sasuke kicking him awake, but was quickly cut off.

“Sakura’s a ghost.”

Naruto’s bright blue eyes flashed crimson, pupils narrowing to become more elongated than round. He rocked back on his heels, clasping hands behind his back. “I know.”

He laughed lightly at her gobsmacked expression. “Sensed you yesterday while I was using its chakra. And while we’re sharing secrets, I’m holding the Kyuubi in a seal on my stomach.” The latter he tossed offhandedly at Sasuke, earning a smirk.

“I know,” the dark haired boy parroted. “Sakura told me.”

Said ghost fidgeted when Naruto pinned her with wary eyes, but continuing his bout of sudden maturity, he made no comment.

Team Seven settled into a peaceful silence. If their sensei showed up on time, like he had threatened to, they still had over an hour’s wait. Not that any one of Kakashi’s students actually expected the silver haired jounin to appear at the designated time. They would believe another village managed to impersonate (albeit it not very well if they didn’t know Kakashi arrived late to everything; even the ANBU had given up on forcing him to arrive in a timely manner) their sensei before they believed him capable of being on time.

The idyllic silence was shattered by the sound of a thousand chirping birds. Sakura flinched reflexively, once more seeing the assassination jutsu as it slammed home in herself and Naruto. The blue-white lightning was already dissipating when she spotted Kakashi propped against the leftmost wooden post.

“I’ve never seen such a strong reaction to the Chidori. It’s almost as if you’ve seen that particular jutsu before.” The jounin stared dispassionately at her intangible form, flanked by her male teammates whom stood shoulder to shoulder with her. “Which is impossible, because you died never knowing it existed.”

Damn that man. His mind was like a steel trap. Sakura had been prepared to talk her way out of anything he threw at her. Being Tsunade’s apprentice required rubbing elbows with politicians, thus she had become skilled at manipulating words and perceptions. It wouldn’t have been hard to convince Kakashi that she didn’t have the answers to give him considering she hardly understood her own situation.

“I have never seen it before I died,” she protested weakly, hoping he’d catch the distinction she made at the end and assume that she had witnessed, and consequently be scarred by, his original technique after she had died.

It really was a paper-thin excuse. Maybe Sakura should have lived down to his expectations of her based on her introduction and claimed to be terrified of birds.

Kakashi’s eyes, and how did she only just notice the blazing red and black Sharingan was uncovered, narrowed dangerously.

“I know I taught my gennin better than to lie to me.”

The pinkette wanted to scoff. Even if he had, it was hypocritical of Kakashi to demand truth from her when he breathed out lies instead of carbon dioxide. “What do you want, sensei? I can’t tell you why I’m afraid of the Chidori.”

How was that for truth, she thought bitterly. It wasn’t as if Sakura could admit half of their team had died on the wrong end of that jutsu.

“I see,” he said, deceptively calm. “Then I suppose I’ll have to bring this matter to the Hokage.”

Sakura snorted. “He can’t see me.”

“Oh?”

His tone was mockingly inviting. She saw no harm in revealing that nugget of information. “Spent a week sitting on his desk.”

Sasuke glared daggers at her. Sakura cursed herself, forgetting that she hadn’t told the raven she had spent the first few weeks of her afterlife trying to find anyone that could see her whilst simultaneously avoiding him.

Did it make her a horrible person if she wished that no one had been able to see her? Why did she care that this world’s Kakashi didn’t trust her? He wasn’t her sensei. They didn’t share the same rapport, one built from years of interaction. She’d probably be ferried to another world in a couple of months, so Kakashi’s suspicion shouldn’t hurt.

“You didn’t see me either.” Kakashi remained unmoved physically, but she enjoyed the way he reared back emotionally, as if she had slapped him, shutters lifting from his eye to show the myriad of emotions he kept hidden under his mask of indifference.

“The day I—awoke, I guess you could say, as a ghost, you were there. Blaming yourself for my death because you weren’t much of a teacher.” He flinched infinitesimally at the reminder. “I actually don’t understand why you or Naruto can suddenly see me.”

Sakura was actually curious about the latter, though. Yesterday wasn’t the first time Naruto had drawn upon the fox’s chakra, so she was certain that the Kyuubi wasn’t the determining factor in why the blond could now see her.

“Heard that, huh?”

Her heart pained. She stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his midsection. If a ghost could cry she’d be leaving a damp spot on his flak jacket. “Oh sensei. You know it wasn’t your fault. All the training in the world wouldn’t have helped me survive the bite.”

Kakashi didn’t reciprocate, not that she had expected him to.

There was more to be said still, but words would have to wait. The faint sound of footsteps announced Shīru’s arrival. Sakura silently observed as the silver haired jounin explained that training would be done on their own time for the foreseeable future. All able bodied ninja were being conscripted into cleaning up the village and completing missions to bring in sorely needed revenue.

Sakura tagged along, for lack of anything better to do. Team Seven cleared one sector after another thanks to Naruto’s unending ability to replicate himself. Despite having made what must have been a thousand clones fighting Gaara yesterday, he would pop out a dozen copies whenever he needed them.

Curiously, Sasuke would glance her way occasionally, as if to reassure himself that she was still there. She remained at a distance. Last thing they needed was for someone to overhear the last Uchiha talking seemingly to himself. Even if they deemed it an unhealthy coping mechanism, Sakura did not want to draw any more attention to herself.

She was surprised when Kakashi dismissed his team that evening. She had expected him to hint in some way that he wanted the original Team Seven to continue their conversation from the morning. But all he had done was compliment them on a good job and shunsined away without even a ‘same time tomorrow’ for her benefit.

Disappointed, she watched as the rest of her team headed home, weary. “Looks like another lonely night for me.”

* * *

To her surprise, a familiar head of black was already standing before her tombstone.

“Sasuke?” she asked as she approached. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re a part of Team Seven,” he said, in lieu of answering. Sakura stared at him, slightly worried that his mind finally cracked. “Doesn’t matter that you’re dead. You’re part of Team Seven,” he repeated, “and we never abandon a team member.”

Sasuke finally looked her direction, and she was stunned. She’d had never seen him look so at peace with himself.

“I know it wasn’t my fault, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“I never blamed you. Any of you.”

Absolving Sasuke of his guilt made Sakura realized she actually believed what she said. Panicked, she had shifted the acts of the previous world’s Sasuke over this one, because logic dictated he could grow up to be that version. But that was doing both him and herself a disservice.

Some things were unforgivable, and Sakura would never forget what she had endured, but she wasn’t going to let that insane version of Sasuke color the one standing before her.

“You’re coming tomorrow.”

Sakura threw back her head and laughed, even as the bright orange light appeared. Sasuke waited patiently for an answer, leading her to believe he couldn’t see the orange light.

“I’ll show up when Kakashi-sensei does.”

* * *

Tucked away behind the statue, Kakashi closed his eyes. In the short time since he had started seeing the ghost of his female student, he had noticed strangely close connection between her and Sasuke. The closeness they shared was part of the reason he had been so cruel to her earlier, because the Sakura he knew had never garnered that much attention nor instilled that much . . . he was inclined to say devotion. It came across as possession on Sasuke's part, if only because the boy’s ability to interact on a social level had be warped after his clan’s massacre.

He had dismissed his team, betting that these two would appear and that they would be more open without him present.

And while Sakura may not have blamed him, Kakashi couldn’t deny the hand he had in her death. She was his student. Four months was a short time. Too soon to expect them to earn a promotion on anything other than sheer luck. At the time, he believed they needed the experience to shatter the rose-tinted glasses they all viewed the world with.

Not even in his nightmares had he dreamed he’d lose one of them.

Their conversation had been short, but it assuaged his concerns. He still couldn’t see her or hear her, but the jounin could read between the lines and fill in what Sakura might be saying based on Sasuke’s reactions and responses.

Still, Kakashi had heard what he needed to hear. He didn’t really know what to think of his former student’s ghost, and felt rather uncomfortable knowing he was unable to keep track of her. He would use Sasuke to keep Sakura in line and vice versa.

Sakura had come across some interesting village secrets since her death and no compunction about revealing them. For Konoha’s sake, he needed gain control over her, and Sasuke had just, unwittingly, volunteered to be the means to do so.


End file.
